From Curb to Counter

0:00Dan D'Agostino The best architects, the best designers, they haven't invented anything. What they did do is they took something else before, properly understood the context of whatever they're working in, and applied those fundamentals to what's happening now. I wanted to be an artist. My father said you'll never make money as an artist being an architect.

0:19Lyssia Katan Was there ever a building that first made you understand the power of space?

0:24Dan D'Agostino I don't really want to do commercial work. I want to do residential work because that's where people will spend the extra time and the money to get it right. From that point forward, I understood architecture in a way that I never ever did. It's not a transaction, it's therapy.

0:38Lyssia Katan What do you hope people start noticing differently in their homes moving forward?

0:43Dan D'Agostino Let me figure out the right way to approach this.

0:48Lyssia Katan What if your dream home looked absolutely perfect on paper, but didn't really work in real life? Welcome to Room to Think. Today I'm sitting down with Dan Diagostino, founder and principal architect of Plan Architecture, where he designs custom homes from curb to counters, thinking through not just how a house looks, but how it performs. In this episode, Dan explains why great architecture starts with questions most people never even think to ask. Do you want to wake up with the sun? What do you want people to feel when they walk through your front door? And is that beautiful AI rendering even buildable? We talk about the hidden psychology of designing a home, why inspiration photos can kill

1:31Lyssia Katan originality, and why the best custom homes are built around the tiny specific details of someone's actual life. By the end of this episode, you might realize the real luxury in a home isn't having more space. It's having a space that actually understands you. Let's get on to it. Hello, Dan. Dan DiAgostino is the founder and principal architect of Plan Architecture, where he designs custom homes that go beyond the pretty picture, using light, layout, and the way people actually live to create spaces that feel as thoughtful as they look. He also uses his social platform to educate people on what good architecture actually means in real life. Dan, welcome to Room to Think.

2:14Dan D'Agostino Thank you for having me. I love your podcast. It's an honor to be here. I was just saying how like how fortunate it is that there's people like getting a voice that is beyond just an Instagram page. So thank you for this opportunity. And it's, I'm sure the podcast is a major commitment for you. So thank you.

2:31Lyssia Katan Of course. Well, thank you for being here. It's an honor getting to chat with you and going through all the work you've done and really talking about how you educate people on your profile. Um, but before we get there, what exactly do you do and why do you do it?

2:46Dan D'Agostino So I am an architect and designer. Um, the more that I work, the more that I blur that line between being an architect and a designer. Uh we are single-family, custom residential uh architecture firm. That's our original discipline. We now do a lot of interior design along with our architecture. So we've evolved into what we call integrated design. Uh, you can hire us to find a property to help you identify the merits of a property, determine the feasibility of building on that. And we've uh developed this uh this token slogan uh from curbs to counters. So you can literally have us doing as much or as little as you want. And it's all things home. We can connect you with builders, we do bidding,

3:39Dan D'Agostino we do construction administration. Um, we just don't actually build them.

3:43Lyssia Katan Okay. So you create everything around the building and then you connect people with the builders.

3:48Dan D'Agostino Exactly. Exactly. Think, I mean, we're hearing a lot of this in the interior design industry, these owner reps. It's almost like we've started taking on that role. Um, person comes to us in the very beginning, sometimes before even a realtor, we set them up with realtors and attorneys and the civil engineers and geotechnical engineers, all the things that you need to do. We are essentially um a concierge. Uh that that's what we've become for our clients.

4:17Lyssia Katan So taking a step back before we get into that, did you start with architecture? And did you know that's something that you've always wanted to do?

4:24Dan D'Agostino Interestingly enough, at a very young age, yes. So I was pretty good at drawing. Uh I I wanted to be an artist. My father said you'll never make money as an artist being being an architect, which it's do a lot of things, it's also just just as a uh aspiring of a profession. Uh I had a couple of early teachers direct me towards mechanical engineering because I enjoyed uh designing roller coasters. Um we this is like when you would first get a computer program on a on a floppy disk and put it in, and then we I would actually be able to design it and build it. So I became pretty good at a computer early on. Um I was accepted to a high-tech high school for architecture, so I literally knew at a

5:14Dan D'Agostino young age my first job in architecture was as a sophomore in in high school. I worked at an architecture for from there until today. So I was 15 years old when I took that first position. It's a passion. I love it. I love it more today than I did back then. I didn't even understand architecture at the time. But to answer your question from the very, very I don't remember ever wanting to be like maybe I wanted to play for the Yankees. There's a little bit of that, but okay.

5:46Dan D'Agostino You're not that that that died in high school that dream.

5:49Lyssia Katan Okay. So realistically, it was an architect all throughout.

5:53Dan D'Agostino It was a real yes. Maybe I would design like Yankee Stadium. That could be cool. Uh if they, but they just built a new one. So I think my chances are are out there too.

6:02Lyssia Katan So when you maybe this is from a young age since you knew it for so long, was there ever a building or a stadium, perhaps, that first made you understand the power of space?

6:15Dan D'Agostino Yeah, I mean, we were I lived in a house where we'd buy a house, or a family, I should say. I lived in a family where we'd buy a house, um, we'd improve the house, and then, you know, modestly over 10 years and then move. So it wasn't like I come from a family of flippers, but there was an understanding of space making. I would see my father, who was a boiler operator at PSV, um, sketching out floor plans. So those are my first memories of of this. But I I would say that as a kid, I understand creating space, but I would say that it wasn't until I was in college, or really, I was, I guess I was out of college at this point, um, I visited the Salk Institute in uh La Jolla, California, which is

7:00Dan D'Agostino a famous building, but it was the first time that I ever felt moved by architecture. Like I've been in buildings that were cool and I've seen materials that were awesome to touch and look at and glisten. But I understood the power of architecture and place there. And you know, it's interestingly enough, I feel like there's always a story, and I get long-winded, so stop me when when it happens. We it was my wife and I, she was we weren't even engaged at the time. We went to California and we said we'd I I like I'm like, please, I just want to see this building. It's been all the architecture books. Give me 15 minutes there, and we wound up staying for you know, six, seven, eight hours, something

7:46Dan D'Agostino like that. We wound up booking a single tour, then an extended tour. Um, we wound up meeting some of the people that actually work at the building and talking to them, and she was moved by it. The the thing that really influenced me at that building was you understand

8:06Dan D'Agostino alignment, you understand aligning you know, a doorway with the view and how that there's a reason why the right hand side of the building performs differently than the left hand side, and it's not simply because they decided to put one group of people on one side, it's the way that the light comes through, and that began it was really

8:32Dan D'Agostino from that point forward. I understood architecture in a way that I I never ever did. Like, I won't put a window on a wall any longer until I know like what am I looking at. Because how how how are you affect like how do you approach that window? How do you see how do you feel the light? Should there be two windows? Um, that was the thing that locked it for me. And and then that's what really made me start saying, okay, I don't really want to do commercial work. Um, I want to do residential work because that's where people will spend the extra time and the money to get it right.

9:09Lyssia Katan Right. And they're in there all day, right? You go to a museum or you go to a commercial space, you're there for a few hours, but your whole weekend, your evenings, you're in your house. You're looking out your own windows.

9:20Dan D'Agostino Yeah. I I've recently come to the realization that I create moments in houses that come up for like two or three weeks a year. That's it. Like that's how specific we are. And I'll explain that for a minute. You know, we might have uh an outdoor terrace that overlooks a certain part of a property with a sunset that you're you're not able to get it when you're traveling, you're not able to get it when you're working, you're only able to get it between the hours of 7 and 8 p.m. for like four weeks of the year. So we're literally delivering experiences that a person might only have four to five times a year, and if they're in the house for 10 years 50 times, we're that specific with some of the

10:08Dan D'Agostino things that we do. And when I started thinking about our design work that way, I'm not too precious about what we do, but it became precious. Like we have an opportunity to give that effect. Why not why are we not sharing that with people?

10:22Lyssia Katan Right, of course, but only that like that's such a small time frame to be able to enjoy that. How does that even come about? Do you do your clients know, hey, there's a really beautiful sunset? I want to watch it as much as I can, or do you kind of help them discover that?

10:38Dan D'Agostino So uh a lot of architecture happens to be about finding out what people care about that they don't know they care about. Does that make sense? What I'm trying to say is I will have people call me and say, Dan, we referred to you. We want to build a brand new home. We've grown out of where we live. Okay, so the reason you're reaching out to me is because you think you need more space. Some people, I'll ask them, well, how much more space do you think you need? Well, we really feel like we need to be another 2,000 square feet. Well, how did you come to that? Right? And then we start getting into oh, you you sometimes have guests or you plan to have a live-in, or you're you're going to want a dining

11:23Dan D'Agostino room, right? Well, how many people for that dining room? Well, 25 to 30. Well, that room is going to be huge. Uh, are you sure you want? Should we make it expandable? One of my favorite stories to tell is that of when I finally completed a house that I built for myself. Um, the first night, my uh we went to sleep. My wife and I, she woke up before me and she took a photo, and it's a perfect photo. I should actually have it up here, but it's the sun rising over my shoulder from from our bed. And I finally get up and she says to me, You're not gonna believe this. I said, What's that? She goes, The sun rises in our bedroom. And I said, Andrea, of course, I like I I plan that. And we I joke that

12:12Dan D'Agostino she says, Well, how'd you get the sun to be over there? Obviously, I am scripting the day. Uh, I will ask people in our initial programming meeting, do you want to wake up with the sun, or do you would you prefer that the sun not be on the side of the house? Now, some people they don't they've never thought of that. Uh, to me, I want to wake up and have the sun rise and we and feel good and be in direct sun. But it's a personal preference. So, my thing is that when I get a person to say, you know, I never actually thought about that, that to me is like, I, all right, now I'm starting to do my job. We're gonna give you a bigger house. You want a bigger house, but we're gonna get it to perform

12:52Dan D'Agostino in a way that you didn't think it could perform. Um, and you know, there's an inkling in there about interior design with architecture. So we've done homes where I've completed a room layout and we've figured out where we wanted to put the bed, but a designer might come in and have their own idea. Not to say that their idea isn't good, but it might take away from the performance of that space. So that's where the integration of interior design started playing a little bit more function. Uh, window treatments we started thinking about. We started thinking about automated blinds and shades and shears and cicadian rhythm and all of these beautiful things that you hear about, we are actually doing.

13:36Lyssia Katan When a client does first come to you and you're trying to understand what they want, they may not even know. What are they asking for on the surface? And what are you listening for underneath?

13:49Dan D'Agostino There's like a little bit of a code here. Um I don't tell them, and but I guess if they hear this, somebody about to interview me, they'll know. The before I even ask them about like kitchen, bathroom, number of bedrooms, I ask them four questions. And I tell them that there are four psychological questions. And the first one is when you pull up to this house when it's fully complete, how what do you see? How do you feel? And then the same for when you open the front door, what is the space you're in? What are you seeing? Then I ask them, we've completed this house. Think about a family or friend that you really care about. What section of the house are you most excited to share with them? And

14:31Dan D'Agostino then the last thing I ask them is if they could be a fly on the wall in the car of that person after they're leaving. What are they saying about it? Okay. What I've just done there is I've broken that fourth wall. It's not about me hearing the number of bedrooms and walk-in closets and bathrooms and whether you guys are sharing a closet. It's how are you supposed to feel? What are people gonna say about you after you you do this? How are you perceived? When I talk about the curb, you know, do you fit in with the neighborhood? Do you not fit in the and with the neighborhood? None of those are architecture questions, right? But architecture should be a reflection of how we live. And the only way

15:14Dan D'Agostino I can get there is by starting with that. And then I feel like that's like giving me a shortcut, right? So every presentation, I will review whatever we discussed and I pressure test it, right? Okay, we came up with the plan. Am I really delivering A, B, C? I mentioned before about the sunlight. Um have I created put them on the dark side of the house? Um, yes, why? Because there's a view that way. Maybe, or maybe I made a mistake and I have to revisit it. But when I present it to them, I'm able to reference those talking points that we had in the beginning. And, you know, that's a jog. That's the way that I've managed to avoid the designer struggle of hearing from the mother-in-law, or they

16:01Dan D'Agostino showed the plans to a cousin, and the cousin's like, you know, you should really consider a dog washing station. You know, like these are the things that will, you know, if if a dog washing station was important to them, it would have come up. And I'm able to point to that. I'm like, well, if we look back at our original program, we'll have to make the change if you feel like it's necessary. But how does that really help us achieve these goals? Um, and that's been that's been the icebreaker. And then, you know, it's fun. Like when you're doing we're making, I like kind of make it like a newlywed game. Like if someone says something like, you know, I don't want to their body language when I bring

16:38Dan D'Agostino up, do you want to share a closet? That's that's always fun to see. Like a husband and a wife, or a wife and a wife, or a husband and a husband, they like it's like they don't actually want to say they don't want to be with the other. Then you've got the others that are just like, I if we could put him on another floor, we should do that. We see it, I see it all. I get, I get to and poking fun at them makes them have a good time in this process. And it's long and arduous, and there's decision fatigue. But if we can constantly build that rapport with them, I break down that wall.

17:10Lyssia Katan That's so funny because when you think about it, there's so many different ways that you can create a home that will really make them happy. But a lot of it boils down to their psychology. Like, where how do they want to be perceived by the neighbors? How do they want to wake up? Do they want to wake up with the sun in their face? Is that gonna make them mad? So you're also kind of playing, I don't want to say therapist, but like you are creating a space that is is gonna be the center of every argument and every celebration and every holiday for the next multiple years. How do you manage that?

17:46Dan D'Agostino As a therapist, as a therapist, would I I'm not even joking. So I I like to think that I go through these like phases in my career. When I first started, it's about having a website and a business card and a logo, and you know, you really don't know anything about design. You could think you know, you you just have no idea. And then you get into like the three to five year range where it's sort of like, all right, now I've got a couple of employees, got a website, I won a couple of awards, I've been in this magazine, in that magazine, but people are still not listening to me, right? So I got to that year five, and I decided I need to figure that like I need to figure out how do I get people

18:27Dan D'Agostino to express what they want and not change their mind. And you know, there was a book that I read, and I wish I remember what book it was, but I'll I'll summarize that let's just say it was Macy's uh or Ray Morgan Flanagan, something like that. What they discovered was that if a person walked in and they purchased the sofa and they delivered it the next day, like 80% of people returned the sofa. And then if they waited two days, 70% of people. And if they waited three days, only 40% of people returned. But if they went to the fourth day, it went back up to 50 or 60 percent. So what I learned was I need to give people room to decide, and I need to reinforce when I said earlier that I asked them

19:20Dan D'Agostino questions and I reference those questions. And when I present to them, I start with the answers to their questions. You kind of have to remind people of how they're making decisions in this. Um your question to me was how do I handle that? And I handle it as a therapist would. I get to the root of what really matters to you, you know, and are we addressing it? If we're not, in the same way that you might be in a self-help book or a session, if it's not serving you, who is it serving? And I, you know, uh at that year five mark, I you know, that book, the several psychology, the the psychology of decision making. Um, this is in in today's day and age, and specifically like with the cost of absolutely

20:11Dan D'Agostino everything, you know, there are some projects I work on that the windows alone are more than the average price of a house. Okay, just like that that you could buy. You this makes no sense financially to buy a lot that's vacant and build a home and do it over two years. It's all emotional. So, like if you're not solving all of these things emotionally, you're gonna be in for a really, really long, arduous. You probably will not succeed. So once I've embraced the fact that this is an emotional process, it is the psychology of being a therapist for these people. I'm helping them find out things about themselves. That to me, and you know, we'll have junior members in the office that I'm just like,

20:58Dan D'Agostino listen, you this is only the third or fourth revision. I've got one project that we've done 84 rounds of design on. Yeah. Yeah. How long does that take? So we've been, you know, we are we're currently bidding the project, and when I tell you that I love the couple, like tremendous, like like family, I truly do. I don't have I I there's no disdain for me. And I'll part of that is because I don't complete a set of plans and then hand it to them, and then they tell me they have revisions. It's like I've completed one aspect of the plans, and I'm only solving for what I need before I go to the next phase. And we might go through five or six meetings to just decide whether the garage is on the left

21:47Dan D'Agostino side of the house or the right. Um that to me is, and do you know, like I I start every meeting now, like announcing all right, are we gonna go and Round 84, or are we staying with 83? And we we happen to we so we're now in bidding and we're doing interior design, and I will actually like change the tone of voice and like mispronounced words that like niche today. I say I'll I had to dumb it down for you in order to like it's this is like such a fun process because it's not a transaction, it's it's therapy, you know. It's it's I know so much about them and I share a lot about myself, you know. Um, so they're like know my kids, I know their kids' names. Yeah, it it's it's a whole family building

22:41Dan D'Agostino process building a home. And not with everybody, some people are not like that. Some people don't want to get to that level of of comfort with me, you know. Um, you've got to figure that out while you're going through the process.

22:52Lyssia Katan Yeah, but it's crazy because you are creating their most intimate space, like you are creating their home, their bedrooms, their bathrooms. Like it doesn't really get more intimate than that.

23:02Dan D'Agostino Um so I will tell you that we have projects that we've worked on for you know super A-list celebrities that I've never even met. And you're just dealing with their handlers or their owners or ups, and that's totally fine. It's not personal. You know, how can I like I've literally had to Google stuff about some of my clients to figure out what they're talking about, and then there's other clients that I know more than I wish I like so much. You actually do you hear all the things that you would never in a million years think that like I don't want to be crass, but like literally sex life comes up in our meetings. Uh, hygiene, one partner's thoughts on the hygiene. You know, it's it's it you hear

23:52Dan D'Agostino it all. You hear it all. We have to think about I I I like joke, like we should find like I I one of my clients was going on and on about how the proximity of the bathroom to the bed, like it was like, and the wife finally said, just tell them you get up and pee five times a night. Like I was like, Well, if you told me the size of your you know, like okay, all right, we don't need to know all, but like you wind up knowing it all, yeah, you know, you do we we figured out that seven steps was enough. Any more than seven steps is gonna be too much. So we walked it off. Yes, yeah.

24:37Lyssia Katan Well, you really do. You find out a lot about these people's lives. Like, we think traditionally in a home, maybe a husband and wife, we assume sleep in the same bedroom, but apparently a lot of people sleep in separate bedrooms, and you need to be able to account for that because at the end of the day, they're spending a lot of money for this house. It should work for them, regardless of what people say. That's why you're making a custom home, not a cookie-cutter home.

25:01Dan D'Agostino You are you've hit the nail on the head. And what sometimes will drive me crazy is when people don't express like you're it costs no more money to tell me what you want. Tell us exactly what you want. We will often to an uninformed um client, lead, whatever you want to call it, you will sometimes I get people, I give them our fee, and they're like, that's it. And then other people it's like, what? I can get a plan online for $1,500. And you've just identified like the custom nature of what building a house is. And you know, some people are like, Well, we hired Toll Brothers. We we we got a toll brothers home and we customized it, which means that they got to choose the kitchen cabinets and the

25:51Dan D'Agostino countertop, and they had a choice of one or two. Um not saying anything negative really about toll brothers or uh people that buy toll brothers, but those are not really custom homes. We're talking about people that have the ability to decide, you know, is is your is your home symmetrical or not? And what why? What is what does it matter? Do you want two and a half cars or two cars? The people are just like, how do you do a half car? I get that question a lot. Well, you might want like an oversized, but like the level of customization, people for people don't realize how much you can truly customize. And we we recently were at a meeting, uh zoning meeting in in a Jersey shore township of Wildwood,

26:44Dan D'Agostino where the board couldn't understand why they would have a requirement for a half a car in their their town ordinance. You know, someone actually even said, Well, how do you even park half a car? Like, how does it it's um we are in a uh in a society where we're we're kind of blind to we're so stuck on customs and accepting so much of what's out there. Um I'm sure you see these things on Instagram, like why is the world lacking color? Right? You'll you'll see it's like it shows like 100 or 50 years ago you could, or I guess it was about 50 years, you can get like 20 different colors of a car. Whereas now you can get gray, white, black, because we just keep standardizing. It's an economic decision.

27:38Dan D'Agostino But when you think about it, we can change absolutely everything.

27:42Lyssia Katan For someone listening that has maybe some hesitations, like some of your clients, actually communicating what it is they want. Do you have a project that you worked on where it's something super custom that the client would you would have never even fathomed it until the client was like, Nope, I want this. And it changed their whole experience in the home. Like most of the time, I think people don't ask because they don't know that they can ask and that it's a possibility.

28:09Dan D'Agostino Constantly. So I I think that most of my clients, and I'm fortunate in this regard, they really don't see boundaries in in in life, right? So I will I think that our most successful projects aren't the ones where I'm the source of every idea. I'm not saying that because I think that I'm I'm like boring or lame, but like the reality is when I get a client that shows me something that I think they're crazy about doing, and then it's sort of like, oh, I guess we could really do that. But your budget doesn't really but you know, if I do a couple of things, there's really not going to be that much more money to do it. So, like I've got this this internal pessimist that turns into an opportunist after

28:53Dan D'Agostino we we had a project, uh a three-story slide. I couldn't understand why. Why, why did we have a slide that took you from the upstairs to the basement? I still don't know why we have it, but I can tell you that it's really, really cool. And it's one of the things that people used to talk about forever. Like they're like, Oh, you're the guy that did the slide. Yeah, I'm I'm yeah, that's that's me. Now it wasn't my idea. They came to me and and said that they they wanted that. We just completed you, you're talking you're mentioning the separate bedrooms. We just completed a home that we were done with the drawings, can totally complete. And we were having a dialogue about interior design and aesthetics,

29:35Dan D'Agostino and really she she wanted a glass wall in the shower, she wanted entirely closed off. I was like, well, guys, we've already like we've got enough room. Like, if I take a little bit of room from this closet, shrink down the laundry room, why don't we just do two separate bathrooms? And we did, and they love it, and it was successful. And granted, I'm using a I'm not being tone-deaf. Like, I understand these are people that have the resources and the means to do two separate bathrooms. But if we weren't being, if if he was just like, you know what, whatever she wants the glass panel, but no, she he was fighting for for a more enclosed shower, and she was like, if she could, there would be no no

30:19Dan D'Agostino walls. And we got to the point where there's two now, there's they already had two different toilets just in the same space. It's two separate spaces. So I I and I try to tell people do not feel embarrassed to tell me you hate something that I've done. I'm not gonna be offended. I'd rather you tell me you hate it, and then let's talk about why and fix it.

30:41Lyssia Katan Rather than you moving forward assuming that they like it, and then years down the road, they're they're mad.

30:47Dan D'Agostino They're you know, they're maybe, or they're I I always think that when we're just talking, they'll say something, or I'll see them lean or turn, or you know, it'll make me think, well, you don't seem like you're like that into that idea. No, I mean it's fine. Well, what do you mean is fine? Well, let's get to the bottom of why you think what would make this better than fine. And it's having to have the meeting with the people either on Zoom in person is always better because you catch the subtlety. Like when I I can tell when they're I'm losing them and they're looking at their phone or their watch and everything a lot better. Um

31:28Dan D'Agostino encouraging people to express things that they wouldn't have thought to express is really the difference in custom design. Otherwise, I could just give you another custom home that I did, it'll be better than that plan off the off the internet, but it's not gonna be 100% yours.

31:41Lyssia Katan Right. And what's the point of a custom home if it's not custom to you?

31:45Dan D'Agostino Correct. Correct.

31:47Lyssia Katan So we touched a little bit about this on uh about social media, but do you feel like people are getting less willing to use their own brain and creativity to say, oh, what if I had a three three-floor slide, or what if I did this? What if I did that? Because we're so addicted to social media and seeing what other people did and replicating that rather than coming up with our own ideas.

32:13Dan D'Agostino Yeah. I I think that you there's so many different ways to answer that question. Um, I don't think that this is a new thing. I think social media is just the mechanism that we can blame it on. I think that I am I'm 43. I am old enough to remember the tail end of people walking into an office with a binder of photos that they cut out of magazines and uh maybe printed off of the internet. Uh Pinterest is you know a great source for collecting images now has been. Um AI is certainly we're we're getting people that are showing us they're merging the photos from Pinterest. And so all of this is really

33:11Dan D'Agostino it's it's uh a repetition, it's it's an essay in redundancy, really. All of these everything I've just described to you, it's when a person, if a person shows you a an image and says, I really love this, um give me something that looks exactly like this. That's hiring somebody to to do a design for you. When a person says to me, I don't know, there's something about this I can't put my finger on, but I kind of like the feel of this, and then we talk, and then I can come back to them with something that is that's design. I will say that rare it's becoming rarer and rarer and rarer that I'm able to do that, just just to be quite honest. There's a book called The House That Pinterest built by Diane

34:06Dan D'Agostino Keaton. Have you ever heard of this? No, so it's the actress Diane Keaton, it's like one of Rosoli's top-selling books. It's it's a collection of all the images that she used to design her house. That's what AI is, okay. Um, I'm sure that you've put together a text message before, and a lot of people don't know this about AI. AI is is it's just a per it literally predicts the next word and everything that you're writing. So if you've ever written a text message and said, uh like you want to say, I'm on my way, if you put I'm oh, it'll give you the option to put I'm like hit the button that says I'm on my way. AI is that. Okay. So AI, if you ask it a question, it predicts what the next, what's

34:54Dan D'Agostino the likelihood of the next word and the next word and the next word and the next word. And then it gives you this printout. Um, if I show it an image and ask it to make a tweak, it's gonna do the same thing. It's gonna try to predict what other images are out there. I don't see it as any different. I don't see AI as any more creative or less creative than a person saying, I type this into Pinterest, uh, I uh modern French country house. You like one image, now all of a sudden your algorithm starts to say, here's a variation of that and a variation of that, and then they send me all of these things, and I have to like almost pretend like, oh, this is beautiful, I've never seen this before. Meanwhile,

35:32Dan D'Agostino you're like the 40th person since January, and it's only July, that have sent me these same images. The I think people are more confident than they should be, if I'm if I'm I'm kind of being harsh when I say that. But we don't really, I mean, I've gone to five years of school, years of testing. Even after all of that, I realized I didn't actually know what the hell I was doing. There, you know, you have to like do this for a number of years to really come to the understanding of what we're creating. And then I find myself sometimes, and I'm gonna sound pessimistic like talking about design with somebody that really just doesn't know truly what they're talking about. But we live in this world

36:17Dan D'Agostino where we've got this confirmation bias where because they liked one image and they're showed a bunch of other images that are also a style or wrong, uh, they are more expressive, if that makes sense.

36:29Lyssia Katan It does. And and it's funny because we we live in a world where so much, I guess now it's it's a little, it's shifting slightly, but most people that are just surface AI, they're on Chat GPT, right? They're maybe haven't dabbled with Claude too much or they're getting into it. But like GPT says you're right to anything you want it to say. It says, Oh, that's a great idea, or you're you're absolutely right. I'm glad you asked. Like, so many things are just not questioned. And what people also don't realize is AI doesn't have its own creativity. AI is artificial intelligence, but it's pulling off of everything it's seen online, everything it's been educated on. It's not actually saying, oh, what

37:10Lyssia Katan a cool idea that would be if I had a, you know, a window here or a plant there. It's it's pulling off of everything it's been educated on. So a lot of times people use, they they forget that it's their own creativity is what drives AI. Or one person creating this beautiful out-of-the-box French country house that's now been duplicated by everybody, they were the first person to come up with that concept.

37:37Dan D'Agostino You you're like hitting this out of the park because there's there's no, I'm a big like music guy, big like I think of there's like before the Beatles and then after the Beatles. I don't know if you're into that type of music and you don't really need to understand it to get the analogy. The Beatles, like Paul McCartney, one of the greatest songwriters ever, said good songwriters create great ones steel. Okay. We are all steel, like the best architects, the best designers, they haven't invented anything. What they did do is they under they took something else before, properly understood the context of whatever they're working in, and applied those fundamentals to what's happening now. AI doesn't

38:25Dan D'Agostino have that ability. Okay. So when I walk along a property and a client, you know, you're in the middle of the winter and you're walking and you're walking over the pavement and they're saying, watch the ice, no matter what I do, it's I've always got ice here. Well, that's because you have your main entrance on the north side of the house and there's no sunrise right there. There's no, I mean, I I suppose in a certain at a certain point in time, AI could be smart enough to be able to pick up on all of that and consider it. But unless the user is inputting all of the data that that I observe and think of like quite literally down to whether or not the electrical wires in front of the house are

39:10Dan D'Agostino above ground or lower, changes where I put a window. Because I don't want to be on the second floor looking at wires, right? AI is never gonna be like that. Now, will people understand it? Probably not. Will are is AI doing better than 90% of people that are in my profession that don't actually care? Yeah, it truthfully is. I think that the the small percentage of people that see the world in the way that people like we do, um, it's not gonna be, you know, if anything, it's gonna help us really prove um context and worth. We'll get images from clients on a regular basis. You know, I I I just ran this through ChatGPT, which which is kind of nice because they're not like driving me through iteration

40:00Dan D'Agostino after iteration to try to solve something that doesn't need to be solved. Um, but at the same time, I'm able to point them to, well, you know, this did add a window, and I would love to put a window there. Do you not want a bathroom any longer? Because that that that's like midway between your toilet and your shower. We could change the second floor plan. Do you want to do that? It's I I'm I so I will tell you that I am like the biggest advocate of AI. Like for me, it's created so much um efficiency in a lot of the business functions that I've done. Um, when I'm done with a concept, I will actually ask AI to render it, and I will show my clients. So, like I basically a week and a half into an

40:50Dan D'Agostino entire project with AI, I can have a photorealistic rendering that's like 50% correct, but they would never know that it's only 50%. They they think it's like a finished image. I'm not putting one over on them, I'm telling them this this is not correct, like it's not gonna be built to look like this. However, like all the high points are here. Um, I think that you know, what do you think at this point? I'm giving people the ability to see what this is gonna look like in a much faster um timeline, which has been really helpful. But it's also made us a little bit uh, I think everybody, I you know, I'll get feedback from people that it's very clearly an AI email. And it's like I have no problem

41:35Dan D'Agostino with it being an email that's been proofread through AI with the hyphens and all the other things that AI does that nobody actually writes with. But when it's changing the context of the discussion, that's when it's sort of like, well, you guys, you're you're sending you yeah, you're this is you've never even talked about the the fact that you're now thinking this should be Scandinavian. Like, what does that even like why should we be Scandinavian inspired? That we've never talked about anything like that. So then you gotta talk to them like, oh yeah, well, you know, ChatGPT was it there's a lot of noise. That that's what it really is. Does that make sense?

42:11Lyssia Katan Uh completely, completely. There's so much noise, and and and everyone is is thinking they're an expert somehow at everything, because AI seems to be. But a post that you put up that I really loved was you comparing one of your drawings with a drawing that you rendered or an AI drawing. And you said it it put one of the windows, like I guess you mentioned right now, in the middle of a shower or in a place where you would not have a window. And it's beautiful, it looks very nice on a rendering, but in reality, it's it's not realistic.

42:44Dan D'Agostino Yeah. I I so on from time to time I will post something that I try to do like like a public good to a to a degree, like a public service. And the post that you're referring to is a home that I did what I just described earlier. I was like a week and a half, maybe two weeks into the project, and I gave them a photorealistic version of it. And I very much say this is a fun AI rendering, it's not to be taken seriously. And then in my email to them, I'm like writing the post. That's one of these examples where the post wrote itself. Because I'm saying to them, listen, don't look at this too carefully. It like added these windows where the shower is, that's not going to be there. And then I don't

43:28Dan D'Agostino know why it changed the columns, but it did. And so I posted that and I shared it with the clients. The clients are like, Oh, this is fantastic. We don't care about the windows. But then I got like the other side of it is well, you just don't know how to prompt. Like, you get like the AI police that come out, and I'm like, no, I'm pretty good at this. I've got like five or six different software programs that that I'm working with to get there. And you know, they call me the AI guy in the office because I am like, I I love. Technology. Like I'm a new program comes out, I'm working on it. I want to see how we can integrate it into what we're doing. But it's just we can't rely on it. You know,

44:12Dan D'Agostino and it and there has been circumstances where you know I'll get something back from my team, I'll be like, We just I yeah, it looks beautiful. We just can't send this to the client. We need to, we need to go back and modify. Like we had one situation recently where we had a pass-through window, and the pass-through window, so the way that we like to use um AI in our final renderings is instead of us bringing it into Photoshop and color grading, which is what we do to try to get consistency among images, it's purely manual, it's repetitive. We might give 20 renderings on a project where you're literally opening up Photoshop, you're selecting the same things, you're moving to them the same degree.

45:01Dan D'Agostino So what we started doing was we started using AI to automate that process. And what we noticed on a recent project of ours was that that this house on three of maybe 10 images, it converted three windows, which are a pass-through window from the in like the kitchen to the outside, it converted it to a television. Okay. So to like the guy in our office who would have been just moving the levers as opposed to just opening up like 10 chat windows, giving it the instruction, photo, uh, you know, um color manage this. It changed, and like if you're not looking carefully, it's like, what on earth? What did we change this? Like the problem's story of like, why are we doing this a and it was in a place?

45:55Dan D'Agostino This is the thing about chat. It was in a place that a TV really would have worked. It was in an outdoor living room, there was all sofa, it just misrecognized what it was. If you're not watching carefully, you're gonna get yourself in trouble. And and I think I suspect that we're gonna have lawsuits in the near future that revolve around AI. I think so. You know, there's um because it's misrepresenting. Like if you're not being clear about it, you're misrepresenting what you're doing. And in certain circumstances, like imagine in that in that image that you were in that post, it actually took the proportions of what I did. And the proportions were dependent on we had a front height, we had

46:40Dan D'Agostino a maximum building height, we couldn't have our lower plates above a certain area. So these are all code things. When you tell it to generate a photorealistic, those things are gonna get massaged. So the house actually grew like two feet. If I can say that to the client and it was built, they might notice that it was different. So I think that there's like a lot coming down the road in the future. And I don't think Claude or ChatGPT are gonna take the lawsuit kind.

47:06Lyssia Katan And that's that's something you can see too, the two feet. But what if it's like a medical thing or a legal thing that's a lot harder to find?

47:15Dan D'Agostino So I uh here's an example of me doing what I hate people doing to me, right? I went, I thought I broke my wrist, I got the x-ray. They're like, I'm like, how long? I'm like, oh, you're probably here in 24 to 48 hours. I'm like, you have a CD of that? Yeah, they give me the CD. I go back to my office, I put the CD in my computer, I download the X-ray software, I open it up, I take a screenshot, I put into chat. Do I have an issue here? No, you don't have an issue, but you do have this and you have this arthritis and you have this thing. And then 24 to 48 hours, I get exactly the same report from the radiologist. So I, you know, I'm here I am complaining about it, but at the same time, I'm going

47:55Dan D'Agostino ahead and saying, you know, in my own personal life, I'm I'm replacing a radiologist.

48:01Lyssia Katan Right. But if it said you need surgery and you went ahead and elected to have that surgery, and and they like, it's like your client saying, you can build this house that was rendered and created blueprint perfect according to AI, and then you build it and it's structurally so off that it falls apart. It sometimes depends on the item, if it's where a window is versus where the foundation is, it changes the conversation.

48:26Dan D'Agostino You are a hundred, I I've had people tell me that Chat GPT told me that this should be able to, I don't need steel for them.

48:32Lyssia Katan Okay.

48:33Dan D'Agostino All right. Okay. Yeah. Can you share? Can you share? So one thing, one new thing is like we're redoing our contract. I mean, for like 10 years, I've had pretty much the same contract. I never got comments on it. Like practically never. I'm getting the same contracts because you know why people are staying comments on the contracts because people are taking our contract rather than reviewing it, they're putting it through Chat GPT and saying, what stands out? Should I sign this? What stands out? I did the same test on my my own contracts, and now to a degree, now I'm having to make changes, which is a little bit of a pain. It's not a bummer. Um, but now I'm able to say, okay, I'm making changes

49:17Dan D'Agostino to my contract. What is this client gonna think? You know, you turn you turn the table a little bit on them.

49:23Lyssia Katan Yeah, that is true. That is true. But sometimes it causes more of an like instead of just reading the contract with your human eyes and and and and with your own reasoning abilities, does this make sense? Does this not? It's running it through AI, which wants to tell you, yeah, there actually are three different problems here. These are the I mean, we've had the same tip thing too, and it's very frustrating. I'm like, we're we're we're wasting energy on something that doesn't need energy wasted on. It's just it's just you know, formalities. Let's get it signed and move forward. And and sometimes that gets in the way.

50:01Dan D'Agostino Not that you're like on my show now, but I'm I've got another question to ask you. Overwork. So let's say that you went in with a um, because I feel just to give you the context, I feel like I have to like overly say when I'm using like when I'm using AI, I want people to know. I don't want you to think I'm trying to make you think that I'm not using AI. Like, and there's like this weird thing, especially because I'm creative, I'm in that realm. If you hire, if you come up with a collaboration with a designer and you find out that they've utilized AI to come up with a design that you've paid them to innovate, does that have any bearing on you and your engagement with that designer?

50:43Lyssia Katan So currently it doesn't. And let me tell you why. We do have a custom tile simulator with Lily that allows clients to or allows customers to go in and custom color any of our tiles. However, it's also possible to create your own design. Let's say you draw a pattern and you want a tile with uh a certain flower on it, a duck, an animal, whatever it is, a shoe, anything you want, we can put on the tile. But what we realized was many times people have the idea of what they want, but it's very hard for them to draw it out or create it. Or maybe they say, Oh, I would love a tile with cherries on them, but I I don't know how to draw that or a lion, whatever, whatever it is. And so we added an AI designer

51:31Lyssia Katan inside our customizer that allows someone to type in cherries, some are cherries. We were just talking about this with our team today, and suddenly it creates four different designs generated by AI that are within the um parameters that we are held to in making custom cement tiles, and is also the pattern that they're asking for. So, yeah, we we do. I mean, we're very we try to be very forward. Tile is not the most high-tech thing in the world, but we try to be very forward with our website and our tools that we're offering our team members, our customers. And if you do want tile with your favorite fruit on it, who's stopping you? So that's why right now we haven't had that experience with a

52:17Lyssia Katan designer telling us that this is their pattern when it's actually AI. But if that does happen, I'm not against it because we're open to using it too. They just prompted it or they had the vision to say, no, I actually do want these XYZ items on a tile.

52:33Dan D'Agostino I like it.

52:34Lyssia Katan Yeah, yeah. So it is it is very cool. So we do try to embrace it, but there's a fine line at the end of the day, especially with most of our tiles, humans are making the tiles, not AI.

52:47Dan D'Agostino So when we get there, so yeah, I mean, you could go the other route, right? Like it's too perfect for this. So I'm curious. I want to check that out actually.

52:58Lyssia Katan Yeah, yeah, definitely check it out. I find that AI helps us take things 80% of the way, and then it requires humor human intervention to actually go and perfect it. 100%. So when it comes to actually design designing the space, you've posted a lot about open plan living needing structure. And that's kind of a hot take because people really like open plan spaces. What why does a completely open space create more confusion often in spaces that you design?

53:30Dan D'Agostino All right. So there's there's two versions and both are applicable. So open plan spaces cost more money because they actually do need more structure. And when I say structure, I mean like beams and columns and girders. So in a home that has walled-off rooms, you're dealing with small framing members that don't really need to carry all that big weight. Um, so that's one answer to structure. The other answer, and and probably more so um applicable to this conversation, is that how do you make a space feel more than just an area? How do you define if I took a large rectangle and did nothing to it, but stuck a kitchen on one side, a TV and a fireplace on the other, and then put a table in the middle,

54:20Dan D'Agostino I've basically just described like the open floor plan concept of America for the last 30 years, right? Um that's just gonna feel like areas in the room. But if I start to like change the floor pattern and I do a trimmed opening and I start to do recesses, and over that table, I do a really statement piece of lighting. And the uh fireplace in front of that's gonna be an assemblage of four or five chairs that sit on an area rug. Now we're starting to create spaces. Um it's the same old thing. Like I've done over a thousand houses. I still have not been able to, not that I would, but I would not, I'm still not able to take something I did for another house and reuse it because there are so many

55:05Dan D'Agostino different customizations that that we bring in that I'm cognizant of that get incorporated into spaces and bring that structure so that we're not dealing with the same thing over and over and over again. We had a meeting today where we have 12 and a half foot ceilings in basically that space, and we're trying to decide do we do over, do we do a soffit over the the kitchen? Do we want to show some some airspace? We haven't landed yet. Um, but we're bringing that degree of structure to our decision-making process so that it's not like, well, we decided to put a soffit here for no reason. We've created created a series of guidelines and and we're gonna decide within that structure we've created.

55:50Lyssia Katan I want to kind of circle back to what we were talking about in the very beginning, how you guys are curbed to countertop. When you are looking at a space before you've decided what it's gonna be, what does it look like when a house is working with the land instead of just sitting on top of it? Because very often you, I mean, you guys are creating totally custom spaces and you're looking at the land.

56:10Dan D'Agostino Let me figure out the right way to approach this. I think that the the best homes that have worked with the land most successfully are the ones that you're not thinking about the fact that the house is working with the land. So I'm gonna say that when you don't walk up to the house and it's like 10 steps to get to the front door, and when you are not walking around the cold side of the house with ice uh in front of the driveway, because that's on the north. Um when you're not encumbered by any of the things that make there's the saying that you don't complain about air conditioning unless it's broken, right? We design homes that don't, we don't get the you know, you don't get the phone calls,

57:05Dan D'Agostino you don't get the contractor calling saying, hey, we got this unnecessary 10-foot retaining wall. If we just flip the house, we've done all of that. So there's efficiency in the plan, there's efficiency in putting the home together. Um, there's understanding what we're trying to achieve as it relates to the neighborhood. That all of these things tie back to the way that we're sitting on the land and with the land. Um one of my before I start pretty much every project, I will walk the property. We we there's a couple of houses that we've done pretty far out of state that we just didn't have the time to go to go visit. And we can do what we can with uh street view and maps and topography. Um,

57:52Dan D'Agostino but nothing beats being able to go to the property and and see, oh wow, I didn't realize that from this point you could see that mountain range that far away. Um those I even though we don't have access to that, that's part of sitting on the land. So I I think not limiting yourself to just understanding the grade and the zoning requirements of the lot, that those are the best houses when it comes to sitting on the land.

58:16Lyssia Katan For someone that is listening, and maybe not building a custom home, what is one thing that they can look at in their current space that might explain why it feels awkward or hard to use and how can they fix it?

58:31Dan D'Agostino Wow, that is a I've never been asked that before. Um

58:38Dan D'Agostino I think that the best way to find a solution is by asking the right questions. Okay. So if you're in a space and it doesn't feel right and you can't put your finger on it, you just haven't identified what's what's the the source of the feeling. So we I I like to say that like my my wife, she could find a problem with any restaurant. We gotta get to like to the third table before we can actually sit down and have a meal. And I hope she doesn't listen to this. This is too far in. She probably wouldn't have listened to this this long. She'll be like, Well, use it as a social clip. Yeah, yeah. Oh, great. Thank you. Um so she'll like we'll sit, and then this one's under the air conditioning, and

59:24Dan D'Agostino the next one, it's the light coming in on her face, and then finally we're there with the other, like it's me, her, and a bunch of 80-year-old people at 4:30 at night sitting in the same position. Uh you need to understand how to respond to your environment, right? So um I had a a walkthrough once with my brother-in-law and and my sister-in-law. They bought a brand new home and they were buying it from these people who had lived there for 20 years. And they asked me to help them figure out how to furnish the living room. And the way that it was set up was that there was like a fireplace, there's a kitchen behind. These owners put an addition, like a sunroom addition, behind opposite the fireplace,

1:00:13Dan D'Agostino and in the center of that wall, they put a door to go into the sunroom, which is like perfectly natural. We should put a door so it's centered and we look at everything symmetrical. Well, what that did was it made it so that the area opposite the TV and the fireplace, you couldn't sit because the the stove, like the access to that room was only through there. So, had they just talked to a person like me that thought about like the use of the space, they wouldn't have put the door there. So, like to answer your question, if you're in your living room and it's like you're just never able to get a great view of the TV, well, why? Is there like what's in the way? If you're looking at the TV and

1:00:54Dan D'Agostino the sun is in your eyes, like, is it is it a placement of TV issue? Is it can we get shades? Um have we properly thought about like a lot of people don't give much thought to the height of the television. Like you'll there are people that fall asleep more frequently because they're forced to lay down to watch TV, right? Because of the location of where it is. Like you just your body is responding to environments that we're not capable of breaking down. Um, so I think that if a person feels uncomfortable with a space, me, I can walk into space and I like the things bother me. I understand why they bother me. I also have this terrible thing where like if something's off like a quarter of an inch,

1:01:40Dan D'Agostino I'm able to see it from a very far distance. And life is not fun when you have ADHD. What's the other one? OCD. Like, like I will want my thing is I just want to not look at anything bad when I'm eating. My life needs to be comfortable. So, you know, I'm able to identify it. It's uh to but to other people, and then there's other people that sometimes don't even realize, like they never even like, oh yeah, no, you could do that. Oh, that's cool. We uh I did a project for a couple. They um we had a wall, and the wall was like there were no openings in it, it was a dark kitchen. And I said, Well, what if we just flip just like let's just flip-flop the kitchen, take the cabinets off the wall, put

1:02:24Dan D'Agostino the wall, those cabinets on the interior wall, we'll open this, and and like when you open it, and I didn't know because we didn't get to the outside yet, but like there's like this beautiful book with like deer and squirrels running and stuff, and we literally did so, like they didn't even think that to them it's a dark kitchen, but that's where the cabinets are and that's where the plumbing is. We need to stick with it. But in reality, like the broader picture is we want light, put wall, put a window. When I squall what was on the other side of the wall, it's like, oh, this needs to be like a 12-foot door, and you know, they still will send me messages like still because I said you're either

1:03:02Dan D'Agostino gonna think I'm crazy or you're gonna love this. And they thought I was crazy, but they also loved it. So I got both on that one.

1:03:08Lyssia Katan That's a good place to be. And like you said, very often we are not aware of what is driving us absolutely crazy, like when that light is hitting us and we can't see, or it's the TV reflection, and and it something's bothering us, but we're just not tapped into what that is. Is it am I sitting directly under the air conditioning bed? Am I do I have the light in my eye? And once we can become aware of that, I think it makes it much easier to find a solution, even if it's not a huge renovation.

1:03:38Dan D'Agostino 100%. 100%.

1:03:40Lyssia Katan So, as a final question, what do you hope people start noticing differently in their homes moving forward?

1:03:47Dan D'Agostino I think that people should notice that there is more to laying out a plan or laying out a house than getting a set of drawings that have a kitchen and a bedroom and a bathroom. I think that there's an uh a relationship between all the spaces and not just spatially, but the disciplines that go into those homes. You will have a thousand people working, truly a thousand people will play a part in a house being put together. And I think that for no additional cost, they should focus on thinking about what it is they're doing and prioritize the expectations of building a home so that they're able to create something that's better than just walking into an architect or a builder's office and saying,

1:04:43Dan D'Agostino Hey, I've got this lot. Can we can I see what you have in your plan library? I think people need to slow down a little bit and then recognize that they're they have an opportunity to drastically improve their day-to-day. Quite literally, with the proper amount of uh counter space and flow in a kitchen, like you can make an omelet in two minutes versus three minutes or four minutes when laying like through proper planning, you can make an incredible space more incredible, or you can make it not so great. So I think that if people can recognize that there are customation customizations beyond anything they could have fathomed by simply giving themselves the time when designing a home to prioritize

1:05:34Dan D'Agostino what they care about, what they're gonna think about, ask themselves what is gonna make me happy about this house. And then working with professionals that can get behind, listen to their vision, and execute that.

1:05:45Lyssia Katan Dan, thank you so much for your time on the podcast today. Thank you for everything you've taught us. It has truly been such a pleasure chatting with you and getting to learn more from the man himself. So thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for your artistry and for sharing all of your knowledge online on social media and teaching us all a little bit more about our spaces. Thank you so much, Dan.

1:06:09Dan D'Agostino Thank you. I enjoyed it.

1:06:10Lyssia Katan Thank you so much for spending this time with me on Room to Think. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow the show, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who you think would really appreciate a more thoughtful approach to their space. You can find more Design Meets Psychology insights on social, in our community, and definitely in upcoming episodes so you can build a better life by design. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.