Michelle Salyer:                Welcome to Outside the Box with BRPH, where we discuss the most innovative, interesting, and outside-the-box solutions to some of the most exciting and challenging projects in the world of architecture, engineering, design, construction, and mission solutions. You’ll hear directly from the problem solvers at BRPH as we dive deep into the latest news, trends and topics in aerospace, defense, manufacturing and industrial, commercial, education, entertainment, and hospitality. I’m your host, Michelle Salyer, and I’ll be your guide as we open the lid on these topics and more, and invite you for an insider’s look at one of the most successful, fastest-growing employee owned AEC firms in the United States. Welcome to Outside the Box with BRPH.

We talk a lot about engineering on this podcast, but today we’re going to flip the script and talk about the design and architecture side of the practice. So we are talking with Matthew Flores, chief design and creative leader about his creative path and his passion for human-centered and empathetic design. Welcome, Matthew.

Matthew Flores:               Hi, Michelle. Thank you so much for having me.

Michelle Salyer:                Well, I’m so excited to talk to you today, Matthew. I love design. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about. To give our listeners a little background on you, tell me how you came to be at BRPH, why you became an architect, and what you love about the profession.

Matthew Flores:               Sure. I mean, I can go all the way back and tell you that my love for drawing came naturally as a child. I loved drawing and it’s something that I enjoyed doing in solitude as well with my brother and our friends. And when we weren’t on our bicycles or our building forts, running amok around the neighborhood, we would sit around for hours and just draw, and it just became a part of our identity and who we are and what we love to do.

And so my passion for drawing really led me to pursue an art degree. And I knew art was my thing. I just really didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. And as a young adult, that was a little unnerving to have a circuitous path that led me to architecture because we had this ideology in our society where we have to know exactly what we want do when we’re 18 years old and we’re all on a schedule. But in retrospect, I think it really actually helped me, and you can maybe see that as we progress here, but upon graduation, I became an art teacher at Orange County Public Schools. And then after that I was a creative arts director at a church. And then finally I had a stint working in HVAC. And you might-

Michelle Salyer:                So air conditioning, heating.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, air conditioning.

Michelle Salyer:                That’s interesting.

Matthew Flores:               It was quite a twist. And on paper that seems like a big step backwards in my creative pursuits.

Michelle Salyer:                It does.

Matthew Flores:               But serendipitously, I found myself working in beautiful custom homes in Orlando, which gave me the opportunity to exercise the technical side of my brain as well. And one house in particular stuck out to me. It was an award-winning house by an architect named Phil Kean in the Orlando area, and it was called the Nemo House because it had a big, beautiful aquarium right in the center of the house. And it was around this time that I also went to an arts conference in New York City called International Arts Movement. And I was on a mission to just get inspired for the next shift in my life. And one of the speakers there was Daniel Libeskind, world-renowned architect, and at the time he had just been awarded the new design for the World Trade Center.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah. And this was really a massive pivotal point for me. I suddenly saw the possibility to combine the creative with the technical and all of those experiences that I’ve had leading up to this point, I saw a new opportunity to scale up my creative endeavors and make a difference, not only in people’s lives, but in society. So it was a really inspiring moment for me.

Michelle Salyer:                So you went back to school at that point?

Matthew Flores:               Went back to school, got an architecture degree, and the rest is history. And I did healthcare design for years, and now at BRPH, I get to do so many different things.

Michelle Salyer:                Wow. Wow. Interesting. That is probably the most interesting career path I’ve ever heard about. So you’re here as chief design and creative leader as I said. We featured your partner in crime, Cristi Moore, on a podcast episode a couple of months ago. So recap for us what you and Cristi do together as chief design and creative leaders together.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, Cristi is a creative genius. I love working with her ability to design through story and narrative is just absolutely world-class. BRPH is known for a technical abilities in a lot of ways, from engineering launch to executing creative entertainment theme rides or designing really wonderful educational facilities. But the company identified the need to bring in leaders with a little different mindset, a more creative mindset.

And although Cristi and I have different backgrounds, we both speak the same language in a lot of ways, and we bring a creative process that focuses on discovery, exploration, and realization. And so our role as chief design and creative leader is to leverage a design centric creative and multi-discipline approach to creating human centered architecture and empathetic solutions. And we can scale this no matter what type of project it is. So whether that’s a hospitality space or an elementary school or even a manufacturing center or theme ride, we can scale our approach to be appropriate for the project.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. I want to unpack that a little bit.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah.

Michelle Salyer:                Talk to me about human-centered and empathetic design. What does that mean?

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, so for me, I came from the healthcare market and I would say the core of my design philosophy is designing with empathy. I have a background in healthcare design, and when we’re designing healthcare facilities, we’re always putting ourselves in the shoes of the different users of the space. So whether that’s the patient or family member or providers or staff, the stakes are high and the emotions are high in these spaces. And so you have to combine a human-centered approach along with performance criteria because people have to perform in the highest manner possible. And so our job as designers was to create an environment that was primed to ultimately save lives. And so this empathetic mindset I really carry across with me across all market sectors.

Michelle Salyer:                So that philosophy has stuck with you. Even though BRPH doesn’t do healthcare.

Matthew Flores:               Even though we don’t do healthcare, I still put myself in the shoes of the users of the space and really listen and try to understand what the needs are. One of my favorite quotes is from Winston Churchill where he said, “We shape our buildings and thereafter they shape us.” And so to me, it speaks to the reciprocal relationship between behavior and the built environment, and it places a lot of weight on the decisions that we make throughout the design process.

Michelle Salyer:                Wow, interesting. Okay. You were brought to BRPH, as you said, to elevate design. You and Cristi have both been here, what, about two years now?

Matthew Flores:               Mm-hmm.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So how have you been able to do that both in practice and in theory?

Matthew Flores:               Well, I think it starts with having the right type of clients and the right type of projects. And we have that here at BRPH. We’ve got a great mix of market types that we serve from aerospace and defense to manufacturing, education, entertainment and hospitality and commercial spaces. So we have no shortage of interesting projects to work on and great palettes to paint on. And we feel that all of our markets can benefit from a human-centered approach. One differentiator for us is cross-pollinating our expertise. A lot of firms, people live within their silo of their specific market, but we look to intersect those mindsets and have our subject matter experts speak to one another.

So I can give you an example.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay.

Matthew Flores:               Leveraging hospitality into an office space or a manufacturing campus or education facility. And this is where Cristi has been critical to this approach. We dig deep into researching and understanding the DNA of our client, and then we build a story or a narrative that becomes the framework throughout the design process. And by the end of the project, if the owner is able to tell the story to others as they’re sharing off their building, we know we’ve done our job.

Michelle Salyer:                Good way to look at it.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, it’s a really great approach. We’re also implementing an evidence-based design approach. And this is something that I’ve pulled from healthcare as well, and there will be more to come on this soon, but I can say that the story-driven narrative as well as the evidence-based design gives reasoning and logic behind design moves, and it gets beyond personal preference, or I just did this because I wanted to. I saw it in a design magazine and I thought it was cool. And it helps us develop metrics to which we can design and make sure that our designs are measurable and successful.

Michelle Salyer:                That’s interesting because design and architecture do seem very subjective, so I look forward to hearing more about how you’re going to make that a more evidence-based practice. So tell me a little bit about the design process, where the ideas come from. Do you do anything unusual? What tools are you using? Tell us how to do it.

Matthew Flores:               I’m sure others could tell you the unusual or oddities that I do, but I’ll say for me, process is everything when it comes to architecture, and we have to fight the temptation to press the easy button and do what we’ve done before. As far as tools, I would say my process is a mix of hand sketching, collaging different concepts and storyboards. We’re utilizing AI quite a bit now, and that process and benchmarking, we also utilize a digital whiteboard so we can share ideas across offices seamlessly. And then of course, designing in 3D programs such as Revit or SketchUp and Rhino, and utilizing different visualization techniques and softwares when we’re going through this process.

But one of the most important things I would say is iterative design. And what I mean by that is not just going through an exercise and developing one idea, but developing multiple ideas and allowing the process to unfold and unlock the best idea and allow that to rise to the top. And for the owner, that helps quite a bit because it gives them options and then it powers them to make a decision as we develop the vision alongside them.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So when we say iterative, we’re presenting several options at one time, or it’s just revisions to the same process? Or-

Matthew Flores:               I would say multiple options at the same time. Yeah, we will get several options going and create a spectrum or an array of options for the owner to react to, and it’s all based on information that we’ve gotten from them. So we’re not coming up with it out of the blue, but hopefully it resonates with the objective at hand that they’re trying to accomplish.

Michelle Salyer:                Yeah. I want to get back to talking about AI in a minute, but before we go there, let’s go back to just this whole, you mentioned design thinking and involving the client and the stakeholders and how that ties into your concept of human centered design and really focusing on the end users. How does that all tie together?

Matthew Flores:               All of our buildings house people in some way, shape or form. So whether that’s a five-star hotel that’s really creative or a sales and delivery center, human centered design ensures that the spaces are not just created to look good or meet some technical specs, but it genuinely supports the people who use them. And we prioritize the needs of the people, but balance that with things like functional flow or comfort accessibility. In our education spaces, we have to think about the neurodiverse population.

And so there’s so many different things at hand and considerations that we have to think about as we’re shaping our space. And human centered design goes beyond the warm fuzzies of creating a creative space, but it also creates long-term satisfaction and performance. So it literally can add value to our clients and help with things like staff retention or the performance of their staff. The building resiliency. We’ve got inclement weather that’s occurring more and more every year, so we want our buildings to perform well. And so again, it goes back to creating measurables that we can measure the success of our design.

Michelle Salyer:                Do you have a favorite project that either an individual project or a type of project that you like to work on?

Matthew Flores:               That’s a tough one. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I can honestly say that the current project, whatever that is, is my favorite. I love diving into new experiences and different building types, and while we do glean from some previous experiences, I just really enjoy and dive into whatever the project is at hand. But to pick one, I will say we’ve done several aviation projects recently and they have a really diverse mix of scales of space. And so that just creates an interesting architecture. Oftentimes we think of buildings in terms of plans, and you look at things in that two dimensional form, but when you cut a section through a building and you see how different size spaces intersect with one another, it creates a more interesting and dynamic space to experience.

Michelle Salyer:                So you’re talking about aircraft manufacturing or offices or all of the above?

Matthew Flores:               Yes, all of the above. So yeah, we’ve been working on some headquarter type buildings that do have a manufacturing or sales and delivery experience that go hand in hand with it.

Michelle Salyer:                I sense you’re being cautious. So can you tell us any projects that you’re working on now or are those all top secret?

Matthew Flores:               That’s also a difficult one. As you know, so many of our projects are NDA, and so we have those non-disclosure agreements. We are working on a really cool project in the Orlando area right now. It’s a multi-use lab, and it needs to be a functional, or excuse me, it needs to be a flexible space that can accommodate different people, different users coming in and out of it to innovate and come up with new technologies. But the interesting thing about that is not only the building itself, but the community that it’s in. Neocity is a community that is based on technology and innovation, and they have a master plan that we really latched onto, and they have a vision of really becoming a global hub for technology and innovation. So to think about how a building can embody that and express that on the exterior is a lot of fun. So we’re just getting started with that one.

Michelle Salyer:                Well, I can’t wait to see that. So you mentioned earlier that you were an art teacher, you were a creative director at your church. Do the arts still play a big role in your life outside of the obvious architecture part of it?

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the arts are foundational for me. And right now I don’t get to return to visual art or music or even performance art as much as I’d like.

Michelle Salyer:                Oh, performance art.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Salyer:                I want to hear about this.

Matthew Flores:               We can go to karaoke night some night. I’ll just say that. But I will say that I’ve taken what I’ve learned from those mediums, and I translate that to my architectural process, and it helps me be more innovative. I can give you an example of that. I was once working on a project and had a young architect working with me, and he had the task of developing a pattern across a large facade of a building, and we wanted to create this consistent inconsistency with that pattern that seemed and create a texture out of it that seemed organic and random, but did not seem chaotic. And so there needs to be a certain rhythm to it. And I had the feeling that he was a musician of some sort. So I asked him, “Are you a musician?” And he said, “Yes.” Lo and behold, he was a drummer once upon a time. So I said, “Perfect.” And I explained to him that we wanted to create a polyrhythm across the face of the building.

Michelle Salyer:                I don’t know what that is.

Matthew Flores:               So a polyrhythm in music is when you overlap two different time signatures. So if you have a waltz and a three, four time, like 1, 2, 3, and you overlap that with something that’s in four, four time, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, you wind up with this syncopated rhythm that’s much more texturized and much more interesting than just one or the other. And he knew exactly what I meant, and he knocked it out of the park. So it was really fun to speak in different terms in another medium and have that translate. And so yeah, that’s one way that I like to think and process things. And it works the other way too. If you were to talk to a musician and mention things like creating texture or color and music, that would mean something to them. Or if you said negative space that you might quiet things down and create a moment of pause.

Michelle Salyer:                White space as we call it. Yeah.

Matthew Flores:               Exactly. Comedians are amazing at this. I’m not a comedian at all, but timing is everything.

Michelle Salyer:                Yeah. That dramatic pause.

Matthew Flores:               If you’re able to pause and wait just the right moment, then you create that magic. And so I like to think of these things.

Michelle Salyer:                I’ve never thought of it that way. That’s interesting. Yeah.

Matthew Flores:               I love to think of these things in terms of different mediums and different artistic forms and cross pollinate those ideas as well.

Michelle Salyer:                Interesting. So let’s jump into Third Space. I know when Cristi was on the show, we talked about this quite a bit. This effort was definitely born from your joint efforts with Cristi. So for those who are not familiar with the term, don’t know what it is or not really sure how it applies to BRPH, tell us more about Third Space.

Matthew Flores:               Well, to sum it up and to one degree, Third Space is everything that we’ve talked about so far. It’s our creative approach to design at BRPH. But to dig a little deeper and give some of the backstory, BRPH was founded in 1964, and of course in parallel with NASA and the space race. So it’s no coincidence that our birthday is essentially the same as Kennedy Space Center. And our connection to aerospace is very much synonymous with our reputation as far as things that are precise, we’re calculative, we have very high quality standards, a really great QAQC process that Gregg Kirkendall has overseen, but leap forward to today. And we brought those same qualities to several different markets, and people recognize our expertise in those areas. So Third Space comes in to play in a way that adds creativity to those expertise that we’re so well known for.

Michelle Salyer:                The technical side? Okay.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah. To the technical side. And it’s derived from the work of a sociologist Ray Oldenburg, and he coined the term third places. And so if your first place is your home, your second place is your work. Third places are public spaces, often outside of your work and home where people gather or rub elbows or collaborate. And I like to think of it as the connective tissue of our society. And so we took this concept and associated it with our aerospace roots and called it Third Space. And we imagined, well, what if our buildings and our environments that we create are collaborative and creative and give people this opportunity to rub elbows again? And what if those spaces are in our hotels, in our schools, in our offices, in different sales centers, and in a campus setting, we’re not just designing a buildin.g. What’s the relationship between those buildings? We’re often designing the space between buildings

Michelle Salyer:                Or the negative space, like you mentioned earlier.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, the negative space. That’s right.

Michelle Salyer:                So Third Space is more of a philosophy or a design collective, or is it all of the above?

Matthew Flores:               I would say it’s all of the above. It’s our approach to design. It’s our creative process that leads to creative and innovative projects.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So getting back to AI, you mentioned earlier. How is AI changing the world of design and architecture, and can you tell me a little bit more about how you’re using that today?

Matthew Flores:               And that probably could be its own podcast someday.

Michelle Salyer:                That’d be great. Let’s do it.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, maybe we can bring Mayur Patel in. He’s been my right arm in this initiative.

Michelle Salyer:                More than a right hand, a right arm.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, exactly. And we’ll get to the design in a second. I will say as a company, we’re not just embracing AI on the design side, but we’re taking a multi-discipline approach to it and seeing how it can benefit us on the administrative side, even engineering in some ways if possible. But design has really led the way in our initial pursuit of AI. But what I love about AI, I think it’s essentially becoming a collaborative partner with us in our design studios. It can become a really powerful tool for that iterative design process that I spoke about earlier, except you can do things a lot faster. It can help you come up with new ideas and help you think outside the box.

Michelle Salyer:                Do you ever feel like it’s cheating, though?

Matthew Flores:               I don’t. I mean, it’s something that you wrestle with, I think, but I don’t really see it as cheating. I see it more as expanding your horizons, and it’s expanding the things that we do. We benchmark images, we look at similar projects, and to me, it’s casting a wider net.

Michelle Salyer:                Extension of that. Okay.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay.

Matthew Flores:               And although we’re not creating final designs with AI, it’s quickly becoming part of our process, and we’re already seeing it being fruitful for our clients because oftentimes they’re on a fast pace, and we can develop ideas and convey ideas in a really fast manner that helps them make decisions quicker. And other things that are out there, I think, are the potential for optimizing the performance of our facilities, enhancing creativity and creating data-driven design solutions where we’re able to collect data through AI and allow that to inform our decisions. And then the obvious automating repetitive tasks. So yeah, we’re committed to sharpening our tools. We have a group that meets once a month, not just for AI, but digital design technology in general, and we’re holding ourselves accountable to sharpening our tools and staying on top of what’s out there.

Michelle Salyer:                Oh, that’s great. I didn’t know that. Okay. Okay. I’m still fascinated by the process of design and how the ideas are generated, where they come from. How do you make sure that you’re on the same page with the client from the get-go? I mean, we talked about design thinking a little bit, but how are you shaping their vision or helping them bring their vision to life or even showing them a vision that they may not have considered?

Matthew Flores:               Yeah. So again, we utilize design thinking and we use a process that’s called LUMA. And I think I mentioned it’s based on looking and understanding and making.

Michelle Salyer:                Oh, I didn’t know that was an acronym.

Matthew Flores:               Okay. Yeah, it is an acronym.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay.

Matthew Flores:               And it’s different every time. We have some exercises that we do, but we cater it to our clients and whatever project they have at hand, and we put a creative twist on it. But our first objective in the discovery process is just to listen. We really want to understand what the client’s needs and wants are, and then we’ll bring in subject matter experts, but we really discipline ourselves to listen early and move beyond assumptions. And then we gather that information and we create a document, and I don’t want to get too much into the process, but we feed it back to the client and then it tells a story. It goes back to that story-driven, narrative-driven process, and it becomes our north star for the project as it guides us through decision-making, big and small throughout the rest of the life of the design.

Michelle Salyer:                I won’t make you give up any trade secrets, but personally, where do you think your inspiration comes from? You mentioned your love of music, obviously your love of art and drawing, but is there a time or a process that sparks ideas?

Matthew Flores:               You’ve got some great questions. And this one, I can probably give you two answers. One of my favorite all-time artists is Chuck Close.

Michelle Salyer:                I know who that is.

Matthew Flores:               You know who that is? If people aren’t familiar with him, they’re usually familiar with his work.

Michelle Salyer:                Is that really up-close portraits?

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, he’s the guy. If you’re up close, you see an array of squares and circles that are painted, but then as you step back, you see that it’s a hyper-realistic portrait of someone. So that’s inspirational in and of itself. But he has a pretty famous quote about inspiration that has really stuck with me through the years. And he says, “Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get work.”

Michelle Salyer:                Oh, interesting.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah. And although there’s a little bit of sarcasm and cynicism to that maybe, and I think he was a little sarcastic, it’s actually quite true. And I think a lot of times people think, oh, you love to draw. You just get to do what you love. And yes, that is absolutely true, but at the same time, it’s also true that it is a ton of work, and you arrive at a final decision through exhausting a lot of different solutions. And so I think the amount of work that goes into it, it’s a lot, but at the same time, it’s very rewarding. On the other hand, I do seek to find inspiration from other people, particularly other types of artists, like you said, musicians or even comedians. And I love listening to podcasts of people who describe their creative process. Recently, I was listening to a Norah Jones podcast where she was interviewing-

Michelle Salyer:                That’s the singer songwriter?

Matthew Flores:               Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. Okay.

Matthew Flores:               And she was interviewing an artist or musician by the name of Andrew Bird. And he is a music genius. He’s very smart. He loops music and plays multiple instruments. But he was saying every time that he sits down to write a song, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And that resonated with me. It really struck a chord because when you start with a blank slate, it can be a little overwhelming at times, and you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know where to start.

Michelle Salyer:                We all suffer from a little imposter syndrome now and then.

Matthew Flores:               Absolutely. Yeah. And so I appreciated his honesty, but it does make sense. Something that provided a little bit of anxiety earlier in my career now produces a little bit of excitement because you anticipate, you know this is going to form into something. But that uncertainty, if you’re okay with it, and you can sit in that in the moment, it allows you to open your mind to other possibilities and other solutions that might be out there instead of something that was already a canned answer.

Michelle Salyer:                So that’s that white space or that negative space again.

Matthew Flores:               Yeah, absolutely.

Michelle Salyer:                Interesting. I know Cristi talks about storytelling as her superpower. What would you say is your superpower? What do you bring to the-

Matthew Flores:               I don’t know.

Michelle Salyer:                … the wonder twins equation?

Matthew Flores:               I don’t know about superpowers, but I know we’ve been discussing the creative side of what I do. And I do love that. I love seeing ideas and concepts become concrete, sometimes quite literally concrete and other times, things that we can see and feel and touch. So I would say my superpower is synthesizing.

Michelle Salyer:                What do you mean?

Matthew Flores:               What I mean by that is we develop a vision for a project, but I love seeing it come to life, seeing the idea merge with the realities of the real world that we’re in. And that means that there are constraints. We’re working with other people, other ideas. We’re working with budgets, but I love seeing that all of those things synthesize into a final solution. And that can get confusing and messy at times, but at the end of the day, it’s collaboration, it’s communication, and you see something that has a real impact in the world around us come to fruition. So yeah, I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but synthesizing the idea into a real experience is really rewarding for me.

Michelle Salyer:                Okay. So one last question for you. If you could give some advice to either your younger self or young folks who are either struggling to find their path in life or know that they do want to pursue architecture and design, what would you say?

Matthew Flores:               That’s a great follow up to the last question. I think embracing the uncertainty and enjoying the ride. Design is full of ups and downs. It’s full of starts and stops. I can give you one more quote by the famous philosopher, Mike Tyson, who says, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” And design is, like I said, it’s hard work, and we don’t do it on an island. We have to work alongside other people.

Michelle Salyer:                Well, hopefully you don’t feel like you’re getting punched in the face.

Matthew Flores:               No, no. But you just have to anticipate that things are going to change and be malleable. Be ready for that evolution. Be ready for that change, and then embrace it. Because I would say that besides love, I think design is one of the most rewarding and fruitful experiences we can do as human beings.

Michelle Salyer:                Wow. That is deep. And on that note, we will end the podcast for today. Thank you so much, Matthew. This has been a lot of fun.

Matthew Flores:               All right. Thanks, Michelle. It’s great to be here.

Michelle Salyer:                Thanks for joining us today for Outside the Box with BRPH. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode as we explored some of the most innovative and challenging projects and the most pressing issues and trends in the AEC world. Learn more about us at BRPH.com. Email us at info at BRPH.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. You’ll find this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you’ll be notified when new episodes are posted. See you next time on Outside the Box with BRPH.