Finding Yourself Outside Office Culture / Bryan Maddock

Hello guys! Thank you for checking out another episode from The Archiologist Podcast. Today we have a very lively interview with Bryan Maddock, this episode was recorded before the lockdown started happening. It was the first episode in person and I have to say, we laughed SO much and it was amazing just to see the interaction we were having face to face. I can't wait to meet with Bryan in the future again. So, a little bit about Bryan, he is an architect, Director of Fantastic Offense, and a part Instructor of Architecture at The Design School at Arizona State University. Maddock’s ongoing research and design work emphasize utopia as a strategic tool for proactive rebellion and a call for a renewed professional agency. Prior to Fantastic Offense, Bryan Maddock was a project designer at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in New York and a designer at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Hong Kong. Asides from all professional success he has had in his career, he has had immense success in his new business opportunity called Dimensions.Guide. Dimensions.Guide is a comprehensive reference database of dimensioned drawings documenting the standard measurements and sizes of the everyday objects and spaces that make up our world. He offers resources to professional designers, students, and the public alike as a way to enhance our global collective awareness of the parameters and dimensions of the things around us.

From all his background you can tell this is going to be a very interesting interview! We talked about his experience in school, about the fact that he actually started school as a graphic designer, and later merged into architecture. How working at incredible firms at BIG and OMA made him a better designer, what he learned through this, and WHY he left the office world. We then talk about how architecture is a very multidisciplinary career and why exactly he chose to view architecture, not as a construct of buildings, but more as a way to help others through Dimensions Guide and also his own practice for speculative design, Fantastic Offense. But I really don't want to spoil it for you, because you have to listen on your own to our conversation. I'm sure this will help many of you that currently feel stuck at your jobs and want to diversify into different mediums of creativity. Without any further ado, let the talk begin!