Architecturally Speaking

Reviving Old Spaces: The Art of Adaptive Reuse in Architecture

• Ontario Association of Architects • Season 2 • Episode 13

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In this episode of Architecturally Speaking, host Ryan Schwartz delves into the fascinating world of adaptive reuse  with acclaimed architect and interior designer Dee Dee Taylor Eustace. 

Did you know adaptive reuse is a key player in sustainability? Dee Dee explains how repurposing old buildings can conserve materials, reduce waste, and preserve historical character—all while meeting modern needs. 

As the founder of Toronto-based Taylor Hannah Architect, and with a career that includes hosting Love by Design on HGTV and appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dee Dee brings a wealth of experience and passion to the conversation.

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Reviving Old Spaces: The Art of Adaptive Reuse in Architecture


Ryan Schwartz: 00:04.266 - 00:58.762
Hi and welcome back to another episode of Architecturally Speaking. I'm your host Ryan Schwartz and this podcast is brought to you by the Ontario Association of Architects. With each new episode we pull back the curtain to give you a look behind the scenes with architects and other design professionals to explore everything related to architecture from sustainability, design, construction, city building and so on. So today we'll probably touch on a few of those topics because we're talking about adaptive reuse and heritage buildings, Now, what are those? Well, we'll find out shortly because we're chatting with Dee Dee Taylor-Eustace, who is an architect and interior designer. She has a practice in Toronto called Taylor Hanna Architect. She's been involved with a few architecture schools in Ontario, helping to inspire the next generation. She's hosted Love by Design on HGTV. She has a few columns in national newspapers, and she's appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show a few times, among a handful of other shows. So, Dee Dee, welcome. Thanks for taking time out of your busy media schedule to join.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 00:59.241 - 01:00.222
Oh, thank you.

Ryan Schwartz: 01:02.042 - 01:19.411
So as far as architects go, it seems you've had kind of a unique path. I don't know many architects that have been on TV, let alone Oprah. So maybe that's a good place to start. Kind of walk us through a little bit of your progression as an architect and your career a little bit. I'm kind of curious to hear about that.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 01:20.305 - 03:15.537
Gosh, how long do you have? This could take a while. Uh, no, I'm not going to go back. Uh, so far, but I went to university of Toronto and I was one of 10 women in a class of 65. And today I'm involved in the university of Toronto. Faculty of architecture and the Laurentian school of architecture. And it's about 50, 50 Ryan. So back then it was just, there weren't a lot of us. And so graduating, you know, Toronto society of architecture award, and then went on to do my apprenticeship. I wrote my 13 NCARB exams, got the model one setting and three years after that opened up my own practice. So I am celebrating this year at 35 years in business. Yeah, and so what happened with me is I love towers, so I ended up going to Crangham Boke, then working with Michael Kirkland. Remember, he and Ed Jones does the city hall, so institutional. Then as a woman, I kept just doing residential. After working with Gordon Ridgely, I opened my own practice. But what was really amazing about that is that I started doing media. So I started every design show known to mankind and my sister, Mary Jo Eustace had a show what's for dinner. So she got me on everything and it just turned that the HGTV show I did in Canada got bought by the U S. So when I went live on Oprah, we fed out to 27 million people. So from there, yeah, I came back. I was the design expert for the Globe and Mail for a couple of years. I wrote constructive criticism for the National Post, got a couple of books, and I've written a lot of columns. So I've had an unusual architecture career, but I've always combined it.

Ryan Schwartz: 03:16.300 - 03:42.474
Yeah, that's super interesting. And 27 million, that's intimidating. I don't think we'll have that many listening today, but we're working on it. And reading through your bio, you've done quite a bit of charity work and giving back to the community and whatnot. So that's kind of a nice little segue into adaptive reuse, because it's almost like you're giving back to a building. So what is adaptive reuse? What are we talking about?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 03:43.601 - 04:22.760
So adaptive reuse is truly sustainability in a larger format. So think of building typologies. So right now, most people, I mean, my kids tell me nobody over 40 goes to work on a Friday. Uh, where are they? They're at home. So how do you repurpose that? So a lot of the office buildings today, they're looking at versus taking them down. They're looking at really repurposing adaptive reuse for residential. Now you could say that's easy peasy. There's the, you know, the actual construction pieces there, but then it needs to be adapted to the new typology.

Ryan Schwartz: 04:24.101 - 04:33.389
So it's, it's kind of taking an old building and recycling it, right? It's, it's not that simple. There's a lot more to it, but you're, you're taking something and kind of repurposing it.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 04:34.215 - 05:12.878
Yeah, think of it like a really good facelift. I mean, what you're, yeah, what you're trying to do is, all right, we have this building. So think of like the structure of a building. 50% of it is there, you know, the concrete, the walls, the windows, you know, the elevator. So we already got that. So why take it down, Ryan, and start again? So adaptive reuse. I mean, I took an old fraternity house from 1906 and turned it into a condominium. And so that in itself is just sort of, yes, it still was residential, but it had a whole new set of regulations.

Ryan Schwartz: 05:14.096 - 05:21.283
Yeah, and that's interesting that that was residential to residential because when I think of adaptive reuse, there's a lot of other different directions you can go to, right?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 05:21.323 - 05:22.464
Oh, completely.

Ryan Schwartz: 05:22.905 - 05:34.537
Some common ones that maybe come to mind for people are taking an old warehouse and putting in artist lofts and that kind of thing. So, like you said, our buildings and what we need from them have really started to change and evolve.


Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 05:36.069 - 06:41.270
And you have to look at, so when you mentioned the artist loft, so what that construction was post and beam wood, right? So really big spans and really tall ceilings. So great for light, great for so many different things in that kind of, you know, I think of a candy factory in Toronto. Think of factory builds. So once you have that span, you can do infill. What's great about some of these old buildings, the one that I was talking about was 1906, but it was triple masonry. So triple masonry wall is like a thick load bearing wall. And we built the structure inside. Today we do a lot of veneer walls. So, you know, you, you can't have as much structural flexibility, but it goes on and on. Think of all the houses that are restaurants and doctor's offices. And, you know, they take a great old house and they do a, you know, a glass box on the back and it can be a medical, you know, surgery element. So truly the sky's the limit. The question is why and where.

Ryan Schwartz: 06:42.697 - 07:07.235
Yeah. And I'm sure it's always evolving. Like I was just thinking of the COVID pandemic and everyone's working from home, like you said, on Friday afternoon, instead of working downtown at the office, you're working from home. So a lot of those offices downtown are, you know, the vacancy rates are a little higher than they have been historically. So there's been a push, I know in certain cities to kind of repurpose some of those office buildings into residential as well. Have you any experience with that?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 07:08.260 - 08:17.391
Completely. So I was involved as the architect and the interior design designer for a building that was office. Then they put nine stories on top of that building and kept the office below and kept the office running while they do construction. So that's when I said where and why it's okay, we're going to do this, but it's not like Ryan, you can kick everybody out for. 12 month period, right. And then sort of take over it. So there are new methodologies of construction. And I think intolerance too, because let's say you're all living in a condo and all of a sudden everybody's working on a Friday afternoon. So those bylaws have to change. People have to understand that. You know, there is a new, new, there is a new repurposing, a new adapt, you know, adaptive use. So one of the cool things I think in buildings is they're making a communal kitchen or they're making a communal boardroom or they're making somewhere people can leave their actual space. Right. And then do what they need to do within their structure.

Ryan Schwartz: 08:18.314 - 08:42.507
And there's some cool examples too of repurposing, not just buildings necessarily, but just structures. I was thinking that in New York they have some interesting projects like the High Line is a really good example if people aren't familiar. It's an old basically train track, an elevated train track, and it's been repurposed into a park. And I know you've been spending some time in New York as well. Have you been there? Have you been to the High Line? Yeah, yeah, yeah.


Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 08:42.647 - 09:10.226
I lived in New York for a year and it's where I wrote Uh, a book that, um, life, love, and design duties, duty rules, which is interesting. I wrote 365 rules, one for every day of the year based on. Really broom typology. I mean, silly things like, you know, how many chandeliers you knew need in terms of how long your, your tables, et cetera. So, yes. So the highlight, what's great. I can't believe they don't let dogs on it.

Ryan Schwartz: 09:10.646 - 09:12.086
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's too bad.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 09:12.106 - 09:55.667
It's weird. Yeah. But it's a raised park and it works so well there because, you know, really the streetscape sometimes down in New York is busy, it's traffic loaded. And so you raise it up and think of, you know, the building back in the day, they called it the Piana Nobile, right? The first floor is kind of where all the garbage and the entrances were. And then you raised up. And it was nicer one floor above. So we, if you could only think that we could do that, you know, in Toronto with our Gardner, you know, expressway and what's going on down there, which is there's some really interesting interventions, the parks, et cetera, on the waterfront.

Ryan Schwartz: 09:56.407 - 10:07.115
I think I did hear some talk about that, about doing a similar thing with the Gardner. And, um, I think it's lost some steam, but that would have been a really exciting project. Um, that's too bad, but, um,

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 10:08.001 - 10:55.514
But I think that's, I think your point is that, you know, it's not just buildings that we can readapt. What are parks? Like when Olmsted design really in New York City Central Park, the reason being is that the towers could all get light and air and you could venture through, et cetera. So as we get more congested, one of the things that. In the condo development that I did, we put terraces out, we put roof gardens, we put, everybody has green space. The doors open, you know, there's some new condos that don't even have terraces. So, you know, living in the sky is great, but we, we also need to rethink how do we get the green and nature back into our living spaces.

Ryan Schwartz: 10:56.164 - 11:10.107
Yeah, I think that's important, especially in our congested downtowns and those areas in particular. So we talked about a couple examples. Now, you also mentioned the why. So why is this important? Why should we be doing adaptive reuse?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 11:10.808 - 11:58.736
Yeah, well, one of the things I really think, especially in Canada, is that we, we really have a residential downtown. If you look in Montreal, if you look in Vancouver, you look in Toronto. If you don't, Ryan, have a residential downtown, it becomes a ghost town after work and also becomes a ghetto. and crime and I think one of the things that makes Canada so, you know, successful as a country is our mix of residential, of office, of different typologies of living. You can have homes, you can have condos and they sit right beside each other and they coexist. So downtown is very important to keep active after business hours.

Ryan Schwartz: 11:59.946 - 12:41.478
Yeah, and I'm also thinking of some other ideas to bring in too. Like you mentioned, the shell of the building is already there, so that's going to save you some time, some money, because you're not having to reconstruct 20 stories of concrete or whatever it may be. You're saving materials and things as well. You don't have to knock it down and throw it in the dump and start again. And there's also the idea of heritage conservation and that's something I'd like to touch on too and I'd like your opinion on this because when or what constitutes a building worth saving? When is a building sort of a heritage building in your mind? I know that's kind of ambiguous and it's not an easy question to answer but you know what's worth saving?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 12:42.651 - 14:04.681
Yeah, it's, it's interesting because just because it was built in 906, you know, 1906 doesn't make it fantastic. But then you look at what was going on then there was sort of Edwardian architecture. There was more, I would say colonial architecture. And then weirdly you had Frank Lloyd Wright doing a whole bunch of different kind of prairie pieces. So. There, there are designated architects and architecture that are fantastic examples of those times. So heritage in any policy format should look at that criteria. And sometimes it's, you know, we, we developed The condo, we kept three walls of a 1906 building and preserved, but the back, and they like this with heritage, when you add or modify, you can tell the changes. So I don't really, I don't believe in rip, you know, kind of rip off historicism. I don't think that we should be throwing down neoclassical looking buildings that look like from 1906. I think we should learn from the structure, from the scale, from the axes, and then adapt to today's materiality. So, you know, I think it's that kind of mock historicism is not cool.

Ryan Schwartz: 14:05.321 - 14:05.601
Yeah.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 14:05.621 - 14:14.085
But innovative, innovative restoration and adding to that in a very thoughtful way can be amazing.

Ryan Schwartz: 14:14.525 - 14:42.534
Yeah. And there's, there's sort of a difference between, like you said, like preserving it versus kind of replicating it. And maybe that's the difference between kind of conservation and preservation. Like if you can, you can keep something exactly as it is without changing it, or you can kind of give it, like you said, a little facelift and kind of bring it into today's age, you know, one step at a time without going too crazy. And it's a fine balance. I don't know. How do you balance that?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 14:42.574 - 15:24.277
Yeah. I think if you look at, you know, Picasso, Picasso's known for painting cubism, but truly his early works were, you know, still lives and anatomy and he's, he was so talented. So you must know the rules to break them. You must understand the history of A, what you're adding to or modifying. And then you can have a real discussion, right? So there's no point just, and oh my gosh, you know, sometimes saving these buildings, they, they're not going to last. It's like a big old oak tree. They're so fantastic, but everything has a shelf life.

Ryan Schwartz: 15:25.922 - 15:44.929
Yeah. And it's, you're right. It is tricky. And the, the challenges that come along with some of these projects, like I've seen a few where the amount of work involved just to save a few exterior walls and the cost and the time to do that is, it's incredible. So what, like what kind of, what are some of the challenges that you run into with these projects?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 15:46.210 - 16:33.116
I am, I have to say the chimney right now on a 1910 house and I need to remove it from the inside, except above the roof. And I'm just telling you, between the steel, the structure, and just to watch it up top to see what happens to it, it's actually, it's not smart. Because it really net, net doesn't affect anything, but that is a discussion and that's a guideline policy issue with, in this case, I won't mention the city cause I, I still wasn't going to do it. So, I mean, there's, you know, there's things that make sense and there's things that don't make sense. And I think in order to have a reasonable discussion, that's what's super important.

Ryan Schwartz: 16:34.002 - 16:49.187
And you make a good point. It is a kind of a blurry line between what should be saved and what, you know, shouldn't be saved and who is making that decision. Can you, without you, like you said, naming the city, like who is kind of involved in this, in this process? Like who's, who's, who's making these calls?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 16:49.328 - 17:58.047
Yeah, here's the process. So if you have any kind of building that has been deemed historical, historical or in heritage area, There is usually that particular city or town will have a heritage department. And so you make your application, you draw what you think you'd like to keep and not keep, you apply to them, then the planning department might get involved. The urban design committees might get involved. And then on the client side, we can hire a heritage consultant and say, look, this is what they would do. This is actually deemed a heritage in a good way. And this is just, you know, utter pog walk. I don't even know if that's the word, but so there, there definitely, there's the city and it's not always the city against. you know, the, the person with the heritage house, sometimes the person with the heritage house wants to do the right thing. I have a heritage department that every time we added something had to look extremely modern. And I even thought they were too extreme. So it depends on the, it really depends on who you got.

Ryan Schwartz: 17:58.877 - 18:18.267
And you mentioned the client and I think that's an important part to all this too. If you have an older historic building and you want to repurpose it or add to it, it makes sense that you're going to need some client buy-in. What's your experience with that and having clients, you know, do you have to convince them to buy into this kind of process or are they excited for it?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 18:20.836 - 19:05.500
Well, there's a lot of different clients. So there are, you know, right now I'm working on a particular project where the client is very much into restoring because the previous person sort of, I will say decimated, but they didn't, like they stuck out over limestone sills and they didn't, they did like, I believe a plastic roof. I mean, things that you really shouldn't do. So that's more in the restoration. Also, you know, a client. A client may really not want to maintain that, so how can you go about being clever about that and satisfying the client's needs? Anybody who buys something in those districts are subject to that and they're aware of that.

Ryan Schwartz: 19:06.892 - 19:35.002
Yeah, the complications that come with that. Let's shift gears and talk about sort of sustainability for a second, because I think that's a big part of this too, especially maybe not so much with the houses and smaller projects, but certainly when you're getting into warehouses and towers and things like that, and the waste and the demolition that can be saved by reusing these buildings. Do you have any thoughts on kind of the life cycle of these buildings and how this can be important for environmental sustainability?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 19:35.042 - 21:15.237
I mean, there's so many different factors today because in terms of where people are building, keep in mind these factories usually were out by themselves, right? Or they were in an area that there weren't other buildings. So all of a sudden when other buildings are in close proximity, you can look at Surfside in Florida, you get hydrostatic pressure below gray. Right? So what are the foundation walls from these old buildings? So one of the things they have been sitting there for a hundred years, and typically they're not parched, they don't have waterproofing, they've been breathing and they've been performing. So what you can't do necessarily is put our new ways of building on these old foundations. So we use a couple of different building science companies to look at that. Because the worst thing you can do like one of the best things about any building is that breeds like think of an office building that's sealed up for medically yeah. And there is no airflow so what you really trying to do like a good old cottage. Like the water, not the water, but the air flows through and it dries out by itself. If the rain comes in the window, it's got airflow. So those are really important things, Ryan, about sustainability is how to sustain it. You don't have the carbon footprint, right, in terms of taking it down to, well, demolish. But the thing that's so expensive today are any kind of removal, demolition, and truly garbage fees, but also garbage, garbage impact. Where's it all going to go?

Ryan Schwartz: 21:15.877 - 21:17.979
Exactly. Yeah. You're just throwing it away.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 21:19.240 - 22:11.312
Yeah, but it's got to be trucked out. It's got to go somewhere. It's got to be separated. I mean, again, I wouldn't mention the city, but they separate the concrete from the steel, from the glass. I, I believe it all goes in one area. It comes out separate and goes back in the thing. So I do believe though, for sustainability, is that it's not just using today's materials and solar and wind, it's looking what you have. What you have, what kind of bricks, stone, glass, wood, and really being mindful. What can be reused? What do we really think of taking off a beautiful cedar deck and repurposing it with composite plastic? It's going to be there forever.

Ryan Schwartz: 22:11.453 - 22:12.373
It's not quite the same.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 22:12.393 - 22:19.619
It's going to be caught on your feet. You know, it's, it's, so it's, there's many different decisions that come with that.

Ryan Schwartz: 22:20.499 - 22:22.801
Yeah. And then the, yeah. So, sorry, go ahead.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 22:23.786 - 22:45.858
I was going to say, and then the sustainability recyclability people sometimes think these composites are great because they're made from recycled materials, but there's something about real materials, whether it's, you know, real slate versus a plastic slate that just, doesn't it feel better? Like it's.

Ryan Schwartz: 22:46.673 - 23:09.724
And there's something about those historic buildings that people love too, right? It's that character and those, I hate to use this word, botanics, I know that's a very architect word, but it's kind of that sort of life that is given to materials over hundreds of years or decades when people are walking on wooden floors and touching handrails and rubbing up against the stone walls.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 23:11.425 - 23:54.888
I love that word. You can say worn a patina, but you know, when you walk down a stair, a stone stair in Rome and you can actually see the wear and tear. Yeah. Right. And there's, there's something about that. And then there's, but then there's something about also. the intervention of the new, like in this one project, it's this historical building. And then we did this amazing black metal steel stair that needed to really, and that sits in and goes and surpasses the windows outside stayed the way they are. So some of the windows are kind of at your feet, some are a little bit higher up, but it's the juxtaposition of the two elements that actually makes it beautiful.

Ryan Schwartz: 23:55.236 - 24:26.750
kind of brings it up to speed, yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting choice when you're walking through an old historic building like that and kind of picking and choosing what should we keep? What should we get rid of? What do you want to sort of emphasize? And it probably, you see some of that, you know, coming back to HGTV, you see some of that with these new design trends. You know, people want the wood plank floors again and they want the exposed beams again. So I think there is a push towards that. that historic character that a lot of new buildings just don't have.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 24:28.114 - 25:35.881
Yeah, I mean, you think of, yeah, you can think of, I mean, you step one even further and you think of an old building with unbelievable embellishments, whether it's plaster and unbelievable cornices and whatever lighting that, and then you have this modern, you know, kind of modular sofa and really low rise cool chairs and, you know, how we live today in amongst these historic structures, I, I think there's great scale to that. And that's, you know, when you're really playing with, with history, you're playing with symmetry or asymmetrical, you know, axes, which things are in line or things, you know, basically you walk into a wall, turn right, and then you see this peak in the garden or you're walking right into a garden. So there's all these sort of. things that historic buildings have, the rhythm of the windows. So that's another thing. So surprise element is great and living with history. And I think it's super cool to live with history and have a brand new thing right beside it.

Ryan Schwartz: 25:36.989 - 25:52.879
And when you see those embellishments, those little, you know, plaster embellishments and carvings, things like that, we don't build like that anymore, right? We don't see stone gargoyles and carvings and that kind of stuff because it costs too much. So it's, those are the kinds of things that are kind of nice to save, right? Because you just, you don't see them anymore.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 25:54.039 - 26:34.287
Yeah. I, you know. There's an interesting thing about cost is that we can all just bet, like decide where we want to spend our money. So I might buy a great book. You might buy a great piece of art and somebody else might decide that, you know, their wood floor is super important. So I think we, we can, and we do build with enhancements and embellishments, but they're probably more of today, Ryan, you know, what, what is your embellishment? of today, you know, and I think probably gargoyle wouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind, but to be honest, some people do, right?

Ryan Schwartz: 26:34.387 - 27:04.866
Yep. And going back a little bit, you mentioned the challenges of working with an old factory and the foundations, and I think that's an interesting point to touch on that a lot of people don't think about when, you know, say you're converting an office tower downtown to residential, and there's It seems easy on the surface. You have a giant building, there's floor plates, it's all set up. But there are some serious challenges converting something like an office to a residence or a series of residences, condos, something like that. Any thoughts on, you know?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 27:05.187 - 29:15.302
Oh my God. Well, it's a big topic. So you have to look at an office building has a center core. And from the center core, it has about 25 feet, kind of the corridor, 25 feet to the exterior, basically skin. It's usually a skin. It's a veneer skin. It's not usually a load bearing and all the water and all the electrical comes up that middle core, right? That's just, think of that. Then in a residential building, you have basically walls and shafts that bring up toilet pipes and water pipes and electrical course. So you need, so all of a sudden you take this office floor and you start converting it. So, and then you need to introduce where the water, where the electricity is going to be for these individual units. So it's kind of like taking a block of cheese and making a cheese grater. So you're making all these holes and then you all of a sudden have to, uh, basically put the suites together in such a way for exiting and fire, et cetera. So it's sometimes in the building example that I gave you was it was sometimes easier to put more residences on top. You have a really free flow. But for example, there's a building in Toronto, the Imperial, Imperial oil building. that they converted to residential. It's, and it went very well. It's just, you lose, you have to be, and understand as a developer of that, there is some wasted space and it's more expensive. But what was cool, for example, on the 14th floor where they had the boardroom, et cetera, the 14th floor of that building is spectacular. And so is the, the penthouse before they put the glass box on. So as much as there are challenges building, You get these really beautiful, I call them surprises, but you get these beautiful pieces that you would not necessarily get if you just kind of 10 feet, 10 feet, 10 feet, 10 feet for a residential tower.

Ryan Schwartz: 29:16.243 - 29:20.366
Yeah, because sometimes those constraints can lead to a kind of a nicer outcome sometimes.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 29:21.667 - 29:53.705
But they must, you know, you are changing. Thinkivity said to me, well, let's take an office building and make it into a performance hall, a music performance hall. Yes, it could be done. You would remove, let's say three stories and you would box and build that. So yes, there is value in the concrete, the steel and the glass that exists on a site. And then there is a, basically a feasibility study to tell you what economically makes sense.

Ryan Schwartz: 29:55.433 - 30:02.081
So what other projects are you working on right now? Any other adaptive reuse or any projects from the past that you want to touch on?
Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 30:03.410 - 31:49.147
Well, in the adaptories, one of the things that I now I'm working a bit, um, globally is that I'm doing for, I just finished a home on the ocean in Nassau. That was from the 1950s. And that was very interesting to build in a hurricane environment with salt and everything. So that's interesting because, um. We repurposed this building where the garages were became bedrooms. And again, I think you think back in 1950, how we lived in comparison to 2025, the, the typology of a home has changed. Right. So that's been sort of interesting. I've also got four new homes that I'm doing. on the island of Bahamas, that is about materiality and you're building on an island. So maybe they're not adaptive, but another thing, Ryan, especially, you know, hot topic today is how materialities get to us. You know, how does metal glass would arrive to a small island in the Caribbean or how does it get to a Northern city or how does it get even to, you know, a downtown when we now can't look, we have to look internally to our own supply chain and we need to look further away from our Southern neighbor. So we are going through a massive rehaul. And I think it's great for Canada. We are fine locally. We are rethinking how we build.

Ryan Schwartz: 31:50.729 - 31:52.612
Yeah. And where these materials come from. Yeah.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 31:53.634 - 31:55.076
It's really important these days.

Ryan Schwartz: 31:55.794 - 32:04.537
Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, that's NASA, tough to get materials there, but probably a nice spot for site visits. So there's some pros and cons.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 32:04.557 - 33:23.388
Well, you know, it is crazy. I mean, here's the thing that you might not even know is that there are ships all the time that leave the port of Montreal. Canada right into NASA. There's a whole shipping industry out there that exists for all this flow of material. And so that's the kind of thing that you learn. Another repurposing is planes and boats. Because, you know, a lot of boats that are from, you know, I don't know, let's say 1990, they're repurposed all the time. Like the, you know, if you've got a steel structure in a plane or a boat or, you know, those are always being adapted and reused and repurposed. And in fact, there is a category, you know, this is off topic in that super luxury world of yachts, just called refit. Because upgrading what's there or maybe not upgrading, but probably upgrading, but updating because so many new pieces of technology. And I, I think that you go back to the machine of living and adaptive reuse. We live very differently today than we did even 20 years ago. And we will 20 years from now.

Ryan Schwartz: 33:23.448 - 33:53.734
Totally. Do you think there's something to be said for, say you have a new project and maybe it's a bigger one downtown somewhere. Is there something to be said for designing for future adaptability? And I, sometimes I don't think we were thinking that far ahead and I don't know, is that something that you see? Like if, if you you're building something and you know, this is going to be in 50 years, it's going to have a different purpose or different function. Maybe we should build it flexible in a way that's flexible so that it can be sort of reused in a different way if it needs to be.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 33:55.842 - 35:38.752
Right. So I think there's, uh, I have to quote in the first year architecture course in university of Toronto, there was this kind of crazy professor and it was all about a parking lot. So there's a parking lot and then people drove their cars there. And then at night they turn their headlights on and then it became a dance floor. And then after people kind of pulled out in the stars that then you know couple cars are left over and you know it became just sort of a rendezvous spot a great place to be. And then the morning came again and it was a parking lot so. Truly, a long span, you go back to your factory building or you go back to a shed building, a long span building can have multiple uses inside. So I'm working with a USC grad, architect grad that worked for me, and he has developed a program in AI, artificial intelligence, to look at future buildings from a climate standpoint to see what type of materiality should be used on different facades. What's really important is that, especially in Canada, you know, the North is very different than the South, Southwest, the heat buildup, et cetera. So he's doing an entire just AI program to do an analysis of that. And I think, Brian, that's what we'll see in the future is, okay, Yes, adaptive space reuse, but what materiality can be adaptive for the future? Yeah.

Ryan Schwartz: 35:39.173 - 36:16.877
Yeah, I think you're right. I think there's going to be some big impacts from technology, you know, with Even something like BIM, I'm imagining if you have a new building that was built completely with BIM, which is Building Information Modeling, for those who don't know, and it's essentially a computer model that has all the pipes, all the structure, kind of everything laid out in digital space, so you know exactly where it is. And I can imagine reusing something like that or planning to reuse something like that is going to be so much easier because you sort of know where everything is already. You don't have to rip the plaster off the walls and be surprised by what's behind.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 36:18.138 - 37:58.670
Here's what's really interesting about the architecture profession is that, you know, We go to school, we go to university and we get our degree and then we write our boards and then we practice. And I have worked in set design where I've gone and had basically a department below that built the sets. I must admit. Yeah, I probably haven't used a hammer and a nail except to hang up pictures. Right? So then these plans go to someone who may have a college education, may not. The carpenter may be an apprenticeship program. You know, they may have a great knowledge of the language or not. And that goes down to the plumbing, et cetera. So yes, those. All good plans start with great intentions. The problem is there's human error and there's interpretation and there's experience. So even in the AI, you might have a plumbing hot water that is right near a vent and that seems okay by computer, but you know, the person that's been working on site for 30, 40 years goes, that's not going to work. So. Unless all this is built by robots, I truly think, yeah, AI, I think that our knowledge and our aesthetic, like I could walk in and I can tell you something's an eighth of an inch off. I mean, it's just something that I look at and I know when it feels right and I know when it's, but that comes from 35 years of doing this.

Ryan Schwartz: 37:58.710 - 38:01.131
Yeah, lots of practice. Yeah, and I see.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 38:01.151 - 38:02.491
Yeah, we get like a lot, yeah.

Ryan Schwartz: 38:03.311 - 38:16.138
And I see that quite a bit too, where it's easy to draw something on paper, but maybe the pipe was drawn a few inches too small or something, and you get to site and say, well, that doesn't fit. And you have to adapt. So there, you know, we do have to account for that wiggle room, I think.

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 38:18.328 - 39:08.111
And it's a team. So, you know, I think that trays and the knowledge of, of people just make it better. So surround yourself by expertise, ask questions. A lot of these. skilled labor people, I think we need more. And in fact, I encourage women are in construction industry. You know, you can start off as an apprentice at like 75,000. You can then, you know, by two years, you're making 150,000. You work from seven to three, you get your weekends off. There's great benefits and holidays. I wish more women would become electricians or carpenters. You know, physicality, it's really not as physical as some pieces are for sure, but we need more women in the construction industry.

Ryan Schwartz: 39:08.803 - 39:15.105
Yeah, I'll second that, and we're gonna need lots of people in those trades, you know, as people move on and retire.
Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 39:17.386 - 39:43.938
You can do very well as a tradesperson. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's just a sole practitioner. If you all of a sudden have a plumbing company or electrical company, a drywall company, the drywallers make out very well. We do, right? So I think that that's something, again, that we need to look at our own skilled labor force. And that is all about adaptive reuse, right? That knowledge pool is so essential.

Ryan Schwartz: 39:45.159 - 39:51.043
We've touched on quite a few things here. Is there anything that you'd like to mention that we didn't get to? Anything you'd like to touch on?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 39:53.072 - 41:20.298
I would just say that, you know, architecture as a profession is a, it's a long game and I always say it's a privilege to work. And so, you know, I got into architecture from my love of fashion and almost always writing perfect math exams. I don't know, I've got this logical linear brain. Um, but also the interior design portion of it is so interesting and important to understand, you know, how those two melt into one. And as of late, I've been doing a lot of development. And also I think to engage in your profession and get involved. So I think that, you know, I don't think we talked much about really what the profession of architecture, we started off saying that I had real mixed bag and I truly believe you can carve your own niche in that. And you can be really the Jack of all trades, no pun intended, but it's a large field. I mean, I've also spoken at woman of influence. I've mentorship. I've got a couple of scholarships. My favorite one is at Westview collegiate where hairdressing is a course. And I have now three graduates who've never, nobody in their family has ever gone to post-secondary education. And that's huge, right? That changes a family dynamic.

Ryan Schwartz: 41:21.792 - 41:42.406
Yeah, I think that's a great message. Yeah, it's nice to see you inspiring. Like you mentioned, you're working with a few universities and inspiring that next generation and showing them there's some non-traditional paths if they want to go down that route. So that's kind of nice. And if people want to get in touch with you or sort of see what you're up to, what's the best place to find you online?

Dee Dee Taylor Eustace: 41:43.959 - 42:25.087
I think the best is, I mean, I, the whole Instagram game is, you know, I'm at, at tharchitect.com. It shows a lot of the really, I would say a lot of the projects that we've been involved in. And after 35 years, I mean, I think I've designed everything. From, honestly, like I said, just planes and trains and automobiles. We've done amazing developments, restaurants. I have to throw in jewelry and plates. I know that seems a bit off, but once you're in that design aesthetic, I think, Ryan, it allows you to explore many different avenues. We also had a fashion line that was really interesting.

Ryan Schwartz: 42:25.740 - 43:19.183
Well, you sound busy, so I appreciate you taking the time from all your obligations and shows and all your design projects. So, again, I appreciate your time. That was a great conversation. We'll wrap up this episode. As always, Architecturally Speaking is available wherever you get your podcasts and also on the OAA's YouTube channel, so be sure to check that out for the video version of today's chat. Please leave us a quick review, share with your friends. If you've enjoyed this conversation, that'll help us provide more episodes in the future. And of course, you should check out the OAA's website for lots of additional information. Maybe you're looking for an architect, or maybe you're interested in the profession itself, or maybe just curious to see what's going on in your area. You can check them out at oaa.on.ca. So until next time, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Ryan Schwartz, and this has been Architecturally Speaking. Bye for now.