Show Notes
How does every sidewalk, park bench, and street corner quietly tell us who belongs and who does not?
In this episode of the Nuance podcast, host Case Thorp sits down with Dan Kirby, an architect, urban planner, civic leader, and the first Black president of AIA Florida, to explore the profound moral weight carried by the built environment.
Dan argues that cities are never neutral. Drawing on decades of work at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and public ethics, he makes the case that design either serves people or sentences them. He believes that Christian faith offers a distinct framework for choosing service over sentence.
From the blueprints his father brought home when he was seven to designing people-centered cities at Jacobs, a 50,000 person global firm, Dan’s journey into architecture and his walk with Jesus are, in his words, the same story.
🔑 Key Topics Covered in This Episode:
The Morality of Space: Why cities and buildings are moral environments rather than neutral spaces.
Designing for People: Moving beyond car-centric design and what that actually requires for human connection.
The Planner’s Ethics: The urban planner’s code of ethics and the call to represent those who are not sitting at the table.
Thriving Through Senses: How beauty, awe, and the physical senses shape human thriving within a city.
Public Interest Design: Using faith as a framework for designing for the common good and the public interest.
Inspiration vs. Oppression: Understanding architecture as a tool that can be used for both human inspiration and systemic oppression.
Future Ethics: Navigating the roles of AI and sustainability in the future of ethical design.
📚 Episode Resources:
Jacobs: https://www.jacobs.com/
AIA Florida: https://www.aiafla.org/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Cities are not neutral. They are moral environments. They tell us quietly and persistently what matters. They tell us who belongs, who moves easily, who waits, who lingers, and who passes through without being seen. Every curb, sidewalk, park, building and street corner carries an agenda about what kind of life is expected to happen there.
The same thing with buildings, those in which we live, work and play. What sort of window, and facing which way does this space enrich in my experience as a child of God, or is it the humanizing and sometimes intentionally. So today’s conversation, friends, is about the good, true and beautiful in our cities. And it’s also about attention. Well, my guest is architect and friend, Dan Kirby. Dan, welcome.
Dan Kirby
Hi Case.
Case Thorp
Really appreciate you sharing your time with me. So Dan Kirby is an architect, urban planner, and civic leader. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Florida. He has two masters from the University of Michigan, one in architecture and another in urban planning. He’s a Principal at Jacobs, has served as president of AIA Florida, and was the first black president in the organization’s history. His work spans architecture, urban design, and public advocacy with a particular focus on designing cities for people rather than cars. He’s also an elder at my church, which makes me proud, and he’s a husband and super proud father of a daughter. I got that part right. Super proud.
Dan Kirby
Absolutely.
Case Thorp
Well, friends, I’ve asked Dan to be with us because he is a man of faith and he is an accomplished professional. And so we like to lift up here at The Collaborative examples of folks who are leading in both the marketplace as well as in the church, individuals who’ve thought about how to integrate faith and work. So Dan, let’s start with your journey. I want to hear both about how you came to be an architect and interested in urban design, but also your walk with Jesus. So you tell me which one you want to start with.
Dan Kirby
Well, Case, I think they’re the same story. So I’m happy to tell how they blended together because my exposure to architecture was the direct result of having grown up a church kid. And I’ll explain that to you.
Case Thorp
Wonderful.
Dan Kirby
So, you know, this classic story of a kid that had parents that were very active in church. Like my dad was one of the founding members of our church. I’m a New Jersey kid. I’m originally from Newark, New Jersey. My father was on the Deacon Board. He was the chairman of the trustee board. He was the superintendent of the Sunday School. So if church was open, there was a good chance that we were there, you know, and multiple days during the week. Our church services were held in what was then a converted factory building work. It was on the second story of this factory building, you know, unfolding chairs and they built the pulpit in the corner. And that was a good environment of some very spirited preaching and some good gospel music, right? Old, pretty rough looking building in an inner city neighborhood.
So one night my father comes home to our house after a church meeting and he’s got a roll of plants tucked up under his arm and he lays them out on the dining room table. And I was about seven years old and I saw this set of plants. And on the cover of this, they were totally blueprints then, but on the cover of this plan, this set of plants is a rendering.
And I said to my dad, I said, that’s the building we go to church. And he goes, yeah. He goes, this is now transformed. This is what the newly renovated building can look like. And I’m looking at it, I’m mesmerized. And I said, Dad, like, who can make that happen? Right? Who knows how to do this? And my father says, son, that’s the architect. The architect did this and was able to create this. And that was the connecting moment for me.
And I started drawing cities and places and buildings and have been doing it kind of ever since, but that was the genesis of my journeys in architecture.
Case Thorp
Well, in similar fashion, my father, for a period of his career, owned a number of Dairy Queens, and he wanted to put a playground in one of them, in front of one of them, and I was his playground expert. So he brought home all these little models, and I got to pick out this slide and those handlebars and all these different things, and got to watch all that installation.
Dan Kirby
So I love that story because being a kid, you were the playground expert, like you really were. And that’s how we have to practice design, or bringing people in and bringing them to the table and helping them to express their own ideas. I am absolutely the trained expert in the room, right? But part of it is me drawing out from you what it is that you want. I’m creating a space for you. So if I don’t know you, if I’m not in relationship with you, I can’t really do a very good job of doing that.
Case Thorp
Sure. Well, the one part on which I was not an expert was the ground material. And so my dad put in pea gravel. And sure enough, all the kids would pick it up and throw it and break the plate glass windows on the Dairy Queen.
Dan Kirby
No, it’s trying to make sure you were tough. But yeah, that’s thinking through unintended consequences right there.
Case Thorp
Yeah, they had to replace the ground there. So as you grew in the shadow of the church, which is just a beautiful thing, as you launched in life, how did your faith guide you along the way?
Dan Kirby
So again, I don’t know how unique my story is, but it’s a tried and true one, right? I go off to college and I start to read and be exposed to other things and to other people. I’m reading St. Louis, I’m reading St. Augustine, I’m like understanding what are the things that…
Case Thorp
Wow, that’s heavy stuff.
Dan Kirby
Well, but that’s what we’re called to do, right? We’re called to be robust, you know, in our intellect as Christians, right? Matthew 22, you know, it says, let me recall the verse. It’s, you shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and thy mind, right? With thy mind. And people forget the mind part sometimes, but that is, you know, we’re called upon to do that. So I started to not just reflect on, you know, the experience I came through the faith, the faith experience I came through, which is rich and is one I love, but also on how do we connect that to, to intellect, right? You know, and what does that really mean in your daily walk? And that led me to explore and to continue to explore things. And I often tell people, you know, I’m a Presbyterian, but I didn’t accidentally become a Presbyterian.
I’m well-rooted in an understanding and exploration of denominations and what they mean and how they practice. I also come to the table with the understanding there’s good and bad parts of that history, right? And I come with that full understanding of placing these things in their true historical context. So that’s definitely a part of my journey.
Case Thorp
Well, I wonder with your father’s career and your academic interest in ministry ever, or pastoral ministry ever tap you on the shoulder?
Dan Kirby
Well, you know, I will say this and this is a thing I’ve discovered. My father passed away many, many years ago, but I continue to be exposed. I’ve certainly was, you know, at one point called “little preacher,” you know, because I was at the knee of my father and around a lot of the pastors and the leaders of the church, right? But also in that journey I’ve come to understand over the years as I’ve met more and more distant relatives, that preaching and ministry on my father’s side of the family, it’s like that was the common thing. Like there’s so many of them that took to that. I think I get it. I think my ministry is intended to be in other ways. And it certainly extends to the work I do every day and this idea of…as architects, as planners, we care for people.
Case Thorp
And that’s why I’m glad to have you here today. Take us, then, on your engineering architecture journey. Did you go into college wanting that, looking for such work, or did you come to a realization you loved it?
Dan Kirby
It definitely, I did start…did you tell people I had eight years of college, right? And I started out as an architecture major, as an undergrad. It was not an easy road, as you might imagine. There’s not a ton of African-American architects out there. It’s a hard road anyway, no matter how you come to it. And I have the greatest respect to other people that have gone through this journey and are in our profession.
I will tell you when I thought I had understood kind of what it might take, because I did take some drafting classes in high school and did very well in those and like this idea of blending art and science. I will tell you, looking back on it now, I really had no idea what I was getting into. I got to that first architecture studio and I could have been on another planet because, just the way that they were discussing ideas in concepts and it really is so much of architecture school is teaching you how to think about things and how to approach things and the sort of the oversimplistic way looking at it is that it’s problem solving, but it’s problem solving for also with gaining understanding and research methods and it’s a great career basis for a lot of things, right? People can go to architecture school and they don’t need to become architects to use the things that they learn in architecture school. Architecture school is a great preparation for just understanding and pulling apart systems and how they work and, you know, being confident in a process of moving from A to Z.
Case Thorp
And then you went a step further into the urban design. And what interested you about that?
Dan Kirby
So it was a sort of very odd but specific set of circumstances. I got very much involved in student government when I was a student at University of Florida. And they gave us tremendous opportunity to do things. I was a student senator. I was president of the Board of College Councils. I was president of my residence area. I was vice president of the architecture fraternity.
I was president of the student union. I was what they call chief chief of staff. Basically position cabinet coordinator for two student body presidents. So I was immersed in sort of the whole student government thing and it came along where the city of Gainesville was setting up a committee to improve what was then known as the student ghetto and it was called, very lofty name. The urban design committee for the university oriented area and they pointed two students to that committee and I was one of them as an architecture student. And with that exposure, I started to realize that more and more. The things that I wanted to get at in design of a particular building were vastly impacted by things beyond that building instruction and going further to the neighborhood and policy and planning policies and zoning decisions and real estate decisions. And I was like, I need to understand how all this works. And if I’m going to do the best job on a building, I need to understand the broader context and all the things at play. also at the time was exposed to the Dean of my college at UF, the associate Dean of my college at UF and the department chair at UF all had the same dual degree combination. They all had master’s degrees in architecture and in urban planning. And I was like, okay, then maybe there’s something to this. And I went the road of finding a graduate program where they had both of these things and ended up at Michigan. And my concentration at Michigan was in urban design. So a blending of architecture and urban planning. And I will say over my career, those two things together have proven to be more than the sum of their parts.
Case Thorp
So tell us today what sort of projects do you work on and how do you spend your time in this area?
Dan Kirby
So, the beautiful thing is I work at Jacobs, and I work in a company with, you know, around 50,000 people globally. Okay. So we do a lot of different things, but it also allows me the ability to work at a lot of different scales on many different types of projects where I might be sitting in a room with somebody that’s doing something very specific to, say, transportation and helping them work through a problem with that, whether it be a transit facility or transit hub or something like that. I might next be in a room with people that are in the utilities industry and helping them to work through a problem. I might be on an urban design problem where we are working with a particular developer that wants to go in and then create value from a place. So I get to work across a large variety of scales, you know, from the institutional to the government to the private sector. And I certainly appreciate the opportunity to get to do that.
Case Thorp
Well, I was going to ask this later, but I’ll ask now. You were for a number of terms on the OUC board. That’s the Orlando Utility Commission here in Orlando. Are you still on the OUC board?
Dan Kirby
Well, I guess I’ll put this in context. So OUC is an electric and water utility. It’s the second largest of what’s called the munis or the municipally owned utilities in Florida. And so OUC provides electric and water service. I had the opportunity to be, and it’s all a board that is elected, if you will, by the Orlando City Commission. So it comes through a city appointment.
So I served right around 10 years. I think it was nine years and nine months as a member of the commission, but you are term-limited. So after those two terms, you have to get out and make way for someone else, which I think is a great thing. I’m a believer, not to get political, but I am a believer in term limits for everything. Having new energy and new people is almost always a good thing. The end of my term on the commission was actually in December of 2017.
Case Thorp
So I’m curious, how did being on the OUC Board of Commissioners change or evolve your own work on the design side? Because now here you are on the permission giving, responsibility, authoritative side, working with designers. How did it change your view?
Dan Kirby
Well, once again, I benefit from those two things being related. So there was an overlap in my architectural work, my understanding. So one of the credentials I carry is I am a LEED accredited professional. That LEED stands for leadership in environmental design, right.
Case Thorp
And for folks listening, that’s L-E-E-D, and you will often see it related to certain projects, and I believe the law requires certain things to be LEED quality.
Dan Kirby
Yep. It does. The public, like in Florida, for instance, public buildings are to meet the standard of LEED at the silver rank or above. Generally, there’s some exceptions to that, but generally that’s the requirement. You know, having been this practice in understanding of sustainability and doing more energy efficient buildings, was a natural thing when I got involved at OUC because we were also as a utility in the midst of a transition and a transition from being, you know, reliant on, you know, traditional fossil fuels for generation. So whether that be gas or coal, right, to moving to becoming to having more emphasis on renewable energy. And so it was a very good interface to have been 10 years in the utilities industry in addition to being an architect, but those things wove together because as architecture changed and utilities industry changed, I had a front row seat at both and I could see how they would all influence each other.
Then sort of infrastructure planning. Infrastructure planning is something that is far more interesting than I ever thought that it would be. And I often say, in terms of cities, cities are always on the precipice of total disaster, right? They’re just teetering, you know, and I say that a little bit jokingly, but there are so many things that have to happen, right, to keep things from chaos. And whether it’s public safety or it is, you know, what, right, water, or it’s the effects of storms, you know, and I spent time, you know, with our linemen, I used to go to our plants. I would be there when we pulled people in from other utilities during storms to make sure they got served dinner. I would make a point to go out and be with people when those things were happening because those are so important to the customer of the utility.
Case Thorp
Well if our cell phones can’t get charged, I mean the world falls apart. So, Dan, I’m curious, it sounds to me like you see very much the value shaping part of your work, that you’re not just problem-solving, but you’re shaping values. You’re shaping people as they live together. When did you begin to see that transition or was that there from the beginning?
Dan Kirby
I would not necessarily say that we are trying to shape values through our work, that an understanding of values is a necessary part of it. Now, I’ll tell you why. Architecture in itself is really an acknowledgement of the expression of what is important. It’s what is important to a society or a company or a city, right?
So in our work, we want to show first that we value people. We value the people that are going to occupy our buildings and they’re going to use these spaces. And that is in and of itself a trust, right? And we have to be trusted with creating spaces where people are going to live, work, study, play, right? That’s an awesome responsibility. And it’s very complicated, right? Because there’s so many choices. And I guess in effect, those do become, at some point, those become moral choices, right?
And we’re often in the situation where if we do it right, we may be representing people that are necessarily at the table, you know, the old adage, right? If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. And it’s hard to bring a lot of people to the table, either actually, right, to go out, get them involved and say, have you talked to these stakeholders? Well, why would we talk to them? Because this is going to have an impact on what we’re proposing to do. We’ll have an impact on those folks. So you want to make sure as part of this process, right, that you’ve engaged them somehow. Because if we’re not focused on creating solutions, we can create problems. There can be unintended consequences. There can be problems, right? And I often tell people you’re either providing a solution, but you might be sentencing someone to a miserable situation. So I’m always on the lookout for them.
Case Thorp
Give us an example.
Dan Kirby
Well, let me give an example here. As an urban planner, it’s in our code of ethics that we have to do planning in the public interest. In other words, I am bound to whatever the circumstance to make sure I’m considering the broader public interest in whatever it is that we do or what we recommend. It’s sort of like…
Case Thorp
As opposed to one particular corporation.
Dan Kirby
Right. I can’t only represent the folks that are paying me. I need to understand the broader implications and I can’t turn a blind eye to that. It’s like being an officer of the court or maybe in some cases it’s an even higher standard, right? Where I, you know, if there’s something that is, that I see that is wrong or unfair or out of place, I am duty-bound to call it out. You know, that is the professional standard.
So, you know, again, a lot of times it comes down to, why don’t you just, you know, draw exactly what I told you to draw? Well, there are implications to lines on paper and on plans made and on policy recommendations. It’s not just “anything goes.” I’ll give you an instance from earlier in my career. So I worked at one point for a developer doing workforce housing. So I was in there inside with the developers and we made an application to a local government to create workforce housing, you know, and this was viewed by some of the folks in the community where we wanted to locate as, here come the apartments and I don’t want apartments and I don’t want those. I don’t want the riffraff moving in. And that’s sort of how they viewed it. Well, in reaction to that, one of the planning officials actually gave counter-testimony to our company and said, hey, you know, I went to one of their developments and over the weekend and I saw this and such that I didn’t really like and completely, you know, blindsided out of context, not true to my knowledge, right? Because I knew what we did to make sure that our residents were safe, right, and to make sure that we provided a safe environment. So absolutely not true. Well, there’s a violation right there where that person was completely going against our own code of ethics because he was giving, was misrepresenting, he’s giving, know, bearing false witness, if you will. So, you know, we’re called to do better. We’re called to do better than that, right? You can’t just, you can’t make stuff up, You know, so I’ll leave it there.
Case Thorp
Well, and I appreciate architecture, like many other industries do have those standards that, as you say, you’re duty bound. And I recognize in a world without that which is good or that which is bad without truth, those standards might disappear. Not saying that the various industries are Christian per se, but meaning as the Christian faith encourages us to be loving and to do good and to do something in the interest of others. These professional standards matter and they should matter.
Dan Kirby
Well, you know, we’re not creating states, that’s right. We’re creating real environments for real people. And as much as architecture can be used to inspire, it can also be used to intimidate or to oppress. And that’s been true throughout history. You know, it sends a message, if you will. I was recently in Paris and I got to see the newly restored Notre Dame Cathedral, right? Absolutely a marvel like through the centuries. You know, it’s circa 1200s, right? Like, so this goes way back. What they’ve done in the renovation is, it now has all the high-tech functionality, right? There are the ability to have, you know, screens and audio, broadcasting and all these things, right, exist in that facility. But they’ve done it in a way that they do not interfere with what Notre Dame has typically been, right? And it’s all done in a way where it’s removable or it’s a hidden panel over here or over there. I mean, they’ve very smart about it, right? But step back. If you’re coming into the building, you typically will enter the cathedral through the Western facade. And if you look at the Western facade, it was constructed not just as a means of telling the story of reverence for the Virgin Mary, right? It talks about the Last Judgment, talks about St. Anne, but it also talks about the dominant order of kings and of bishops. And it did that and told those stories to people that were illiterate, right? So the carvings and the art all sent the message and it was multiple messages, right? Good messages, right? Faith and the importance of faith, right? But also the message of, yep, you will listen to these people and these people are important and they’re more important than you and we can dive into that. You know, so you can, again, can inspire, wow, these soaring arches and everything and the stained glass, or you can intimidate or oppress. So it works in many ways.
Case Thorp
Sure. Well, so I really appreciate urban design as well. And I drive around town and I think, we need a roundabout here. And why can’t we just put in trees over there? And I’m thankful that even downtown Orlando has a number of changes coming that will make it more of a walkable city. Do you have a particular favorite thing to put into urban space? Something that Dan just likes and it works and you want to see more of it?
Dan Kirby
Well, so the answer to that is more of an approach than a thing. I mean, we have to be very careful, right? Because one of the criticisms is that architecture in America today, that there’s a lot of sameness, right? You could be in San Antonio or Seattle or Miami and things kind of look the same. And that’s not right in and of itself.
Case Thorp
Yes. I’m tired of LEGO buildings.
Dan Kirby
I won’t say a favorite thing, but I will say there’s an approach that we have. And we started projects, and I preach this, if you will, the same way. There’s things I need to understand. So if we’re talking about a place, I want to understand the pedestrian experience. And I want to push, in a lot of cases, in creating urban environments, want to push pedestrians to the fore and understand that. But let me just back up further from that.
When I’m starting, say you hired me and you said, Dan, I want you to build something for me. I’m to start with really three things. I want to understand the history of the place where I’m working. I want to understand the specific environment of the place where I’m working. And I also want to understand you, right? I want to understand you and what your motivations are for building and that goes a lot of different ways. And it’s okay and I tell people, treat me like your therapist, it’s okay. Those can be selfish motivations, right? I’ll give you for instance, right? If I’m working for a public sector client and maybe they have a public sector project manager, the motivation of the project manager assigned to that job may be that they wanna get a promotion. You know what? And I actually wanna know that, right? Because, there are things I can do to help you bolster your position and get along okay.
Case Thorp
Right. Or she could care less about trees or benches. They want to do the project to get to the next step.
Dan Kirby
But there’s also in every city we worked in, there are elections and there are political cycles, right? So if we’re coming up on a political cycle and the mayor or the council person of that place needs to have something in place prior to the election cycle, I also want to know that, right? I want to know what’s motivating. And then we also have been in unique positions sometimes to tell people not to build what they came to us for. To say, hey, you know what?
Don’t go create this new thing. What might be better for you is to renovate an existing building or go and do this other thing or maybe you expand the life of your facilities by doing this or that, right? We have to be all in and the worst type of client is one that wants you at arm’s length or that sees you as an order taker, right? That’s not what I do. I’m synthesizing every aspect of what needs to be accomplished here in order to get us to the end. I mean, architecture is not just like any other discipline. And I would encourage people when you go to hire an architect, treat it personally, right? Cause this is what you need to be working with that you have to have some confidence in and that you have to be able to really share with. Cause if you cannot, if you can’t trust them enough to share the reality, if you’re just trying to feed them bits of information or keep things at arm’s length, it’s really bad. We were doing some work in a, I can’t go into specifics about it, but it’s another part of the country and we’re working for a public sector client. And we’d gone through and the city and this particular place owned a lot of different parcels around this particular project. And they had one that wanted us to build, to design one little aspect of this.
I started looking at the thing and I’m diving deeper and I’m being inquisitive because that’s what, you know, that’s how I am. And I said, hey, you guys can use an opportunity to do something that’s bigger than this single project here. In other words, you can leverage these public facilities to improve this entire neighborhood. Here’s all the things you need to do, but you got to be courageous, courageous enough to take this on.
And we developed a plan and we went to them and said, hey, this, you know, just do these key things here, push for this, maybe consider this land transfer here, do these things right. And they were like, no, we just want you to do this thing over here. I was just kind of crestfallen because I was like, we could have set this neighborhood on a path for the next 50 years. You have blinders on and you’ve said, oh, you know, all we want you to do is just work on this one piece of it. That opportunity is going to be gone and it’s going to be gone for the long term. You know, with just a little bit more courage we could create a win-win across the board over the long term. These are things that we hope we can get across to our clients. We try to express them. You know, do we get 100% of the time that they do exactly what we tell them to do?
No, you know, and that’s, you no different than what happens for medical professionals or attorneys or anyone else, you know, it’s like, well, all you can do is, you know, help explain to them what they might do. But they got it, they got to it and share it too.
Case Thorp
So I love hearing that unique approach and it sounds like a healthy one. I think that is evidenced in Jacobs success and your success. Dan, where do you see your faith guiding you in and through all of what you just shared?
Dan Kirby
Well, it’s deeply rooted in not just a daily practice and to give guidance to how I conduct myself, but it’s also in reminding me to have hope in what we do. I could say I live with blessed assurance, right? I am tied into not be discouraged, but to be inspired by what will happen to us, right? And that we are looking at a future where, how can I put this? Let’s see. If you value human life and dignity, then we also need to value the people in the spaces that we create. In other words, can somebody safely be able to cross the street? You think, okay, well, is that that big of a deal if they can cross the street or not? Well, absolutely, right? Because if they can’t be in community, right, then they are shut out. And that, you know, as a Christian, right, needs to, that’s what I want. I want to create opportunities for people to be connected and be in community and for there to be order in things, right? And so I have to value the human experience and I have to be truly connected to that. So I’d say, you know, my faith is informative. It helps me to have hope in the midst of dire circumstances. It’s what we do for the least of these, right? So everything I’ve said about planning in the public interest is really about that. And do my neighbors deserve an ability for freedom and mobility? Absolutely, they do. And what part can I do to help them get there?
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah. Wow, the mobility aspect, I think, is a beautiful thing. Was it the AMA bill that came under George H.W. Bush that required handicap access for all facilities?
Dan Kirby
Yeah, the Americans with Disabilities Act. And you can see the difference when you travel to Europe, for instance, you know, versus the US, and you can see the difference in the facilities that are afforded. And there is a case, right, where you say, okay, why do we want to do that? You know, that’s a particular type of a small segment of the population. Why do I create all of that expense and do all those things? Because that helps other people. Curb cuts don’t just help people in wheelchairs. Curb cuts help people with other mobility challenges and issues. And so there’s a big push right now actually to design spaces for neurodivergent people. And you’ll see a lot of airports and college facilities and things that have quiet rooms or, you know, where people can go, sensory free rooms like in airport terminals where people can go and not be bombarded with sensory issues. And that is a very healthy thing for a lot of people. And one of the key aspects of when we do workplace design is that nobody wants the same environment all day, you know, sitting here at my desk. I love sitting at my desk, right? But also sometimes I want to be, you know, sitting in an environment with a lot of people, or sometimes I may want to be standing around a table, or sometimes I may want to be out walking around or, you know, what people want that they we found in office environments, people tend to when given the choice, they don’t stay in the same place all day. And those people are there, they’re more productive, they’re healthier. I mean, this is all not nice to have, true, there’s bottom line business implications to all these things too. And people think they’re getting away with not doing this or that, or our employees don’t need this or that. You’re really not getting away with it. You’re really putting yourself ultimately at a competitive disadvantage because you chose not to make the right investments.
Case Thorp
Investments in people, and that leads to productivity. Talk to us about beauty. Sometimes beauty, I think, is treated as optional or an afterthought. I’ve appreciated over my years in Orlando, the city has invested in a number of art projects around the town in terms of murals and sculptures, et cetera. Why does beauty matter in a public space?
Dan Kirby
Well, people often will think that beauty is an optional thing. And I would encourage people to look at it in a very different way. If we’re going to create people-centered environments, we need to appeal to all five of the senses. We’re not building places to house museums, to house machines, right? We’re building places that allow people to use them to exist, but also to thrive, right? And if I want to create an environment where you can thrive, I can’t just create a code compliant box. That’s not enough. But can I create a place where you’re healthy, where you’re safe, but also where you are inspired? And I’ll give you a personal example of this.
When I was a graduate student at Michigan, my favorite place to study on campus was the Michigan Law Library. And if you haven’t seen it, just go look it up.
Case Thorp
Well, Ann Arbor is beautiful itself.
Dan Kirby (41:26.7)
The Michigan Law Library, yeah, it’s just still one of my favorite places on the planet. But the Michigan Law Library is a Gothic revival style building built in the 1930s. So it’s got these amazing, again, these soaring arches, these stained glass windows, these huge wooden tables with bankers’ lamps on them, and it has cork floors, right? And I swear, I felt like I gained IQ points just by walking into that room, you know, and I thought, okay, I’m here, as generations of other people have done before me, I can really study and I can do this. And I cherish being in that space. And it was just me going by myself, you know, and sitting in that space and studying, that was an environment where I felt connected and where I could thrive. And the lighting was right and the sound was right, but when I looked up, I was awed of actually just being and having the opportunity to be in this space. That’s what architecture can do for people.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. I had the same experience when I was at my last year at Princeton Seminary. I would walk over to the university campus and they had, in Firestone Library, the exact same sort of reading room that was enormous. And I said to myself, okay, you’ve got just a few months left in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Come over here as much as you possibly can. And I agree, I gained a few IQ points just by the room.
Well, this has been so instructive. I would ask, what kind of encouragement or hope would you give incoming architecture students or urban planning students?
Dan Kirby
Well, I think one is to realize that you exist in this environment of enormous change, right? And positioning yourself as close as possible to and never forgetting the people that are ultimately going to use the environments that you create, right?
And there’s a sort of a seduction in a lot of cases of the imagery that we’re able to create. And we were able to create graphically and just the most elaborate imagery. And it can be seductive to just see, wow, this could be possible. And to be, you could be seduced by the images, right? And you can put on a 3D headset and kind of look at these spaces and you can experience them before you go to them. But we can’t ever lose this connection to real people. Now, with that, more than ever before, we’re able to test that what we think works actually does work and you’re able to be a part of this loop of sharing things that really do work and then monitoring those things that work or don’t work. So I would encourage people to make sure that they understand and can access the tools, right? So that’s one thing.
Another thing is the morality of working in an environment that is is so influenced by algorithms, right? And there’s a danger there because you look at machine learning and you look at the ability for us to use AI tools, right? I use AI tools for, and we all do, whether you realize or not, we’re all using AI tools just about every day for something, even something as simple as the queue on your Netflix account or whatever, right? Yeah.
But those tools can have an inherent bias in them. And we need to be aware of that. And we need to be pushing for transparency and understanding and the ability to correct and fix those things as we see them take place. Just to be, yeah, definitely people should never lose that focus on human beings, always be aware of the technology and what it means, both good and bad, and then to be really future focused and understand that you exist in this environment of constant change.
Case Thorp
Dan, thank you so much for your thoughtfulness and for sharing with us. I really appreciate it.
Dan Kirby
Glad to be here, Case. It’s so good to have this environment to connect faith and work. I go back to my 20s and I remember putting together this forum for young professionals called just that. It was like faith and work and how did, and to just talk about what that meant and how it would come into play in your environment and in your daily going to coming. So I really appreciate the work that you guys do at The Collaborative to help people to connect on an ongoing basis.
Case Thorp
Thank you. For those listening, we will put a link to Dan’s company, Jacobs.com in the show notes. Well, friends, thank you for inviting us into your day. Perhaps share this episode with a friend. Share it on your own social media. Leave us a review. Like the episode. Everything helps us to spread the word. If you go to our website, wecolabor.com, that’s wecolabor.com. Drop us your email and I’ll send you a copy of our journal, Zeitgeist, which is a number of articles on faith, work, and culture. Many thanks to the Stein Foundation for supporting today’s episode. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
