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Calvis Wyant Podcast
Mark Candelaria on Designing Custom Homes Around the Way Clients Live
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About this episode
What happens before a luxury custom home becomes a finished set of plans?
Mark Candelaria, founding principal of Candelaria Design Associates, joins Tony Calvis, Jr. to discuss the relationships and early decisions that shape a home. They explore client discovery, bringing the architect, builder, and interior designer together early, testing ideas against cost and constructability, and working from the home’s major moves before individual selections.
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- 00:00 Our whole deal is, you know, really establishing a long term relationship way beyond the house. I've got clients that I'm friends with, and we did their house 20 years ago, To me, that's what it's all about. For this episode, I'm. Sitting down with the one and only Mark Candelaria of Candelaria Design. It's clear from the beginning that Mark takes a radically unique approach to architectural design, not just in Arizona, but around the world. We talk about how his firm blends travel, food, music, friendship and lifestyle into the spaces his clients will eventually live in and absolutely fall in love with.
- 00:33 Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Mark Candelaria. Mark. Really good to see you. To good to be here. Handler Yeah. in preparing for this episode, I was struggling to decide on where we should start, Okay. there is so much. But when I visited the office for the first time, I realized this is where we need to start. I appreciate that you made my day a lot easier. That's for sure.
- 01:01 can you walk us through, first of all, the office is gorgeous, Thank you. And it's clearly been done very intentionally for the client experience. Yes. Can you walk us through what that initial experience is that you were designing for? what you want them to feel as they experience Candelaria for the first time? Well, I think, although our office is pretty, pretty nice. I, as you say, I don't want it to be intimidating. I want people to feel like they're at home.
- 01:30 And you, of course, you picked our one conference room that we try to make, you know, kind of a high rise, building, feel like a home. So we got our faux brick and our fire faux fireplace and and, you know, everyone comes in here for a different reason. For it, for a different style home. And we're fortunate enough to design homes in all different styles. And so my mission is just to make whoever, whatever type of house they want to do, I want them to come in here and feel like they're comfortable. And, you know, we can deliver the home they want.
- 02:01 Yeah. I mean, that was my experience was just it is very warm and I mean, we have a full kitchen back there. So, you know, so we try to make this whole thing a real experience. Yeah. Because the clients are coming here not just to see the updates on their plans. I Right. events here. You're Yeah. We just had a big dinner here Friday night for a client that we just broke ground on their property, and, we were we were asked to do several renderings of several rooms. And so we had not shown them the renderings until that evening when they walked into the conference room, which is our dining room.
- 02:33 And, we had them all set up on easels, and they were just blown away. So, you know, it's fun. We try to make the whole if it was just about here's your set of plans. Good luck and sayonara. Well, that's just not who we are. Our whole deal is, you know, really establishing a long term relationship way beyond the house. I've got clients that I'm friends with, and we did their house 20 years ago, and I still see them and have dinner with them. To me, that's what it's all about. do clients.
- 03:02 Do they have any idea just how big it is working with Kendall? I mean, when they walk in, do they understand everything that you provide and the experience that they're going to have? Well, we we obviously focus on producing the house because that's their number one priority. But we definitely go into the fact that, you know, this is going to be a journey and it's going to go long beyond the house, and we want you to enjoy every step of it. And if your energy is good and if you're excited and we're excited, it's just like I tell people, architecture is like cooking, only slower.
- 03:35 And if you're into it and you're loving it, well guess what? The recipe tastes twice as good than if you're just cooking and just, you know, here you go. Hope you like it. So it's the same thing. It's just it's just a different medium at a different pace. That's a great analogy. So how did you go about orchestrating this experience? What were the, the lessons or learnings that you had as you brought clients to the space, saw the reaction, saw how they use the space?
- 04:03 How did that evolve into what it is today? You know, where it really evolved was from our tours. We started doing tours in 2020, 2020 or 2021, I can't remember. I had a client. I always tell this story, but we have a client that wanted to do a Tuscan house. Remember the Tuscan rage in the early 2000? And so I had just started the firm and I said, you know, well, let's go to Tuscany. And he looks at me like, wow, that's a great idea. That's in California somewhere, isn't it? And I said, no, it's it's in Italy.
- 04:33 He goes, oh my gosh, have you ever been there? I said, you know, I never have we if we're going to do this right, let's go to Italy. So that was really how the first tour came to be. And what I learned on those tours was how important it is. Not so much where we're going. It's who you're going with and what you're doing on the trip. And one of the experiences of the trip and we, you know, we'd go to exciting places Florence, Rome, Positano. The most memorable part of the entire trip was our cooking class in the little farmhouse we stayed at, because it was a bonding experience.
- 05:08 And we said, you know, what we need to do is we need. And I love to cook. And so we said, we need to put a kitchen in our office and replicate that experience with our clients. And it's been one of the best things we've ever done. And clients love it and they remember it forever, you know. So and again, what it does is like this last Friday we had Walter Spitz from Creative Designs Lighting. We had invited Berghoff, we invited the team, and all of a sudden, all of these people that are working on the project not only get to spend a little time with the client, because a lot of times they don't get to spend a lot of time, but the client also gets to spend time with them as a person,
- 05:45 not as a lighting designer, not as a landscape designer, but as a person. And that that transcends itself. Once we go into construction and we did we did the same thing with with your clients is we had a dinner and it's just fun. It just it just personalizes everybody and makes everybody, like I said, a person, not just a an entity. It seems like you set your clients up to just be open to inspiration as frequently as possible, so that they can bring that into their home. Yes.
- 06:18 Is that an accurate way to depict it? Is there a way in which you alter that statement in any way? Yeah, I think I think what's hard is some clients really get into it and others have a hard time getting into it. And I understand why. And, you know, it is my job to really tap into into their soul. Who are they? You know what they're going to spend a lot of time in, in this house. And it's a personal space. It's your sanctuary.
- 06:46 And it should be a reflection of who you are and what you enjoy and how you want to live life. And so we put a lot of time into that because, again, you only have one shot to get it right. And I tell clients, you know, don't rush this process because once this house is done, it's done. You're going to live in it and you can't change it, you know. Yeah, you can remodel things, but why go through all that torture again? So I tell them, take the time, take this year to really think about and feel what you want this house to be about.
- 07:19 And, it's been fun to watch clients kind of gradually understand that. And then they, they get into it and they're like, you know, let's talk about this space and what's it going to be like. And I love to sketch and draw. So I, I, you know, a lot of times we'll just draw a quick doodle on a piece of paper said, this is the room. This is what it feels like. Here's the vaulted ceiling. And oh my gosh, I had no idea. It looked like that. You know, so quick sketches, that sort of spontaneous where, you know, if you had to go and put it in CAD, it's two weeks, you lose that moment.
- 07:50 So sketching has always been one of those great tools that I learned from my, my mentor George Christiansen and how how valuable that is just to convey a feeling immediately. all about the feeling in the soul. That's, that's the important part that that it is our job to get into the bricks and mortar. I, I've heard you talk about this before, but you focus on your culture of the internal team Yeah. as the relationship Oh, yeah. And you make sure that both of those sides play together. Yes.
- 08:19 So, I mean, was there a time when that wasn't happening? And did you see what wasn't working from that? No, you know, I've I've always I've learned that really early on when I, when working with George for 18 years, how important the team is and how important that energy is. And, I'll use the analogy of music. It's like we're all band mates, you know, and it's like you pick up the guitar, I'll pick up the drums and, and let's just start playing. And it's fun when you have a team of people that you can do that with, but you don't have to like, okay, I wonder what they're going to play when what they're going to do, you know, and you just start doing it and it feels natural
- 08:54 and that was one of the fun things I had with with the job I did with with Your father is we had such a great team and it was, you know, every meeting was just something that everyone looked forward to because it was so much creativity and so much fun, and there was just good spirit amongst all the players. what are some of the common questions that clients will have? I mean, if you think about the first 20 questions that any client is going to have in their first couple meetings here, what are some of those questions?
- 09:24 What are their concerns? What do they find important and where do you steer them early on to start thinking about? Yeah. So our big focus when we first start is just the, various functions, the various rooms that they want. We obviously then marry that with the site, the site, the list of functions and the list of rooms. And what the site gives us is what's going to form the house. And I never have a preconceived notion of what the house is going to look like, what it's going to lay out, how it's going to work.
- 09:54 I let it organically happen with the client and, and, and if I have the whole team, I like the whole team to help me design the house. We design the house together. And what I love about that is everybody brings their expertise and their vision and their knowledge to the table, and it all happens simultaneously versus, you know, I do this great sketch, I lay it on the table and the first thing everyone's going to try to do is figure out what's wrong with it, okay? It's just human nature. Whereas if we do it the way I just described, that doesn't happen.
- 10:24 We just are all developing, writing the song together. it's not my house. It's it's my client's house. And so I really want all the expertise of all the chefs in the kitchen to come together to form this beautiful dinner that our clients want to have. I'm going to talk about a separate point that seems to be unrelated, but I'm going to bring it back. talked about how you love to run towards fear, to do things that you've never done before.
- 10:54 I think the quote is, your favorite project is the one you haven't done yet, Yeah. Do you bring that philosophy into the client experience and get them to start exploring areas that they may be afraid of or they're afraid of, necessarily? But, get that curiosity yeah, yeah, I try to get I try to get all of us out of the box. You know, it becomes very easy to just kind of come into the same formula and do the same house. But I'm always trying to look at where are the opportunities to do something really different, really creative.
- 11:28 Someone rooms are a little too far out there. But I mean, we had a project a few years ago where it was a steep site on Camelback Mountain, and we walked it virtually had to crawl it because I couldn't walk it. I had to actually crawl on all four hands. That's how steep it was. And, we finally found kind of the spot where I thought, well, here is the most beautiful view, because I'm high enough to look over this, I see this, and when we did the math, you couldn't mathematically get a driveway up there and meet the code requirement for for a fire truck.
- 12:01 It was too steep. And so we're like, well, how in the heck are we going to get up here? So we did design where you parked, and you went up an elevator. And then we finally came up with a design where we said, well, to get a longer driveway, why don't we just build the driveway in the mountain in a tunnel and then pop back out, Wow. and so we'll have enough run and enough rise. It just has to be inside the mountain to get it. And they went for it. So we built a tunnel that took a cost about $2 million to build this tunnel.
- 12:31 And, it's one of the coolest things. You drive in, and then when you drive out, you're actually facing out to the view. you are very free flowing in your ideas, and I try to be. Yeah. A lot of options to your Yeah. do you balance with all the thousands of decisions that they have to make at this point, even before they break ground? How are you managing the anxiety around the decision fatigue and deciding, you know, making the big decisions that will then allow for the right smaller decisions?
- 13:01 You know, again, it's one of those it's one of those things where if you have the whole team, especially the builder involved early, you know, you can the client first thing is, well, how much is tunnel going to cost me? You know, and they got the lot for really good deals. And he knows why. Because it looks like you could literally not build on it. But we figured out how to build on it and, yeah, he paid a premium for the tunnel. But now when you look at the final design and what's happened to the real estate market, he's he's sitting just fine and with an incredible view. And so it's just really important to have the whole team there to, to to evaluate those crazy ideas and do it early
- 13:38 because you obviously don't want to go too far down the tunnel or the rabbit hole and then find out you can't even do it. So I, I try to really keep the builder involved and really assess cost as we're doing these things, as we go. So let's talk about the that build a relationship. Yeah. Super important. architect builder, interior designer, yep. the three musketeers of building any home. Yes. How do you like to introduce those relationships when in the process?
- 14:06 And, you know, how do they how do they all dance together. Yeah the earlier the better. So I tell people what happens if you bring people on along the way. They're going to always want to, influence the design with, you know, hey, you brought me on. Why did you put the kitchen here? Let's move the kitchen over here. Well, we've already got this all engineered, and we're already this far down the path. Now we want to flip the kitchen to complete the other side. Whereas if you bring everyone on right from the get go, well, all that goes away.
- 14:36 Everyone knows why you put the kitchen there and why we're going down this path. So that's just one example of why it's not good to bring people on down the road. I just find everyone works better together if you start right from the very beginning. There are instances where we'll do a quick conceptual design where they don't have a builder, and sometimes we'll do a quick conceptual design and I'll say, okay, in the three months or whatever I've been working with you, I've gotten to know you.
- 15:06 I know what you want to build here. Here's three builders I think you should talk to, or here's a builder you should talk to, because I think you're going to resonate with this person's personality. They can obviously build what you want to build and they meet him. And off we go. Okay, again, my ideal point would be we have everybody ready for the first meeting, but sometimes it just doesn't happen and you bring them along the way, but you still try to bring them on as early as you can. the people have any concerns around the builder, do they?
- 15:35 How often do they come with you, come to you with a builder that they want to use or, you know. you know, it's about it's about 5050. I have a lot of clients that hire us first and use us then to help them find a builder and have probably as many projects where they hire the builder first. And they ask the builder, well, who should we hire as an architect? So it's about it's probably about a 5050 split is what I, what I see. I want to spend a little time talking about your particular room in this office.
- 16:06 Because when I first saw it, you know, I You mean my personal office. Okay. saw it, I realized just how authentic and cathartic it must be when they meet you. You have a 1984 Macintosh. I believe the first one that ever came out. I bought it like the week they, they started selling them. You have. And it still works. I was going to and.
- 16:35 It still works. It works totally fine. It's got, I don't know, 128 K of total memory. I mean it's crazy. You get page three and it starts to, you know, break down. and you have your original dining room table that you started the that's my desk. Yeah. your office. I mean, you would think, oh, it's typical architect's office. No, no, no, this is entirely you. And Know, I've got a couch so I can take my power naps. so much of your character built into this office.
- 17:04 Into this space. Was this accidental? Was this trial and It was. It was organic. It just kind of happened along the way as we grew, and I just, I, I guess I hoard things and don't throw things away. So I've got my old table, I got my old chairs and they just kind of follow me around so that it makes me feel comfortable. It makes me feel again, like I'm at home. Do you notice, clients responding in a unique way every time? Do they all respond the same way when they Oh, it's funny when I usually don't. You know, I usually don't bring people back to my office.
- 17:34 It's kind of my inner sanctum, but when I do, they're always really. You know, I got one of the drawings I first did in college on the wall above my drafting table that I've had since college. So it kind of way it's it's story of my life, to be honest with you, I didn't even think about that. But it really is. Yeah. No, I, I was blown away and, you know, you weren't here when I took my first tour, and I just thought, wow. So, we know spaces can have tremendous impact on their tremendous meaning to people, right?
- 18:08 If you're walking into sort of a bland space or a space that just hasn't been built with intention, is your mind automatically racing towards what you would do with that space? Well, we do a lot of remodels and that's another that that's another area that people just don't associate with us. A lot of times they always associate us with the mega mansions, but virtually two thirds of our work, maybe even higher than that, is remodels and additions. And I love doing them for the reason you're saying. As I walk into so many of these houses and they are just horrible, I mean, it's like, oh my God, no one put any thought into this.
- 18:42 It's just you walk in and you walk right into a wall or, you know, the windows half in, half out. And it's just like, this is no wonder you feel so horrible every morning when you wake up, I feel like I'm, you know, ready to go at, like in an insane asylum. So and then, you know, all of a sudden we start drawing and showing how it can be changed and balanced and foot rooms focused in the right direction. And they're just like, oh my gosh, this house is like a totally different feeling. And so that's where I notice at the most is when we do remodels, it's like, wow, it's just people never it's amazing how much lack of effort goes into so many houses out there and why.
- 19:19 I wonder why people and kids and things are crazy yeah. Is it harder to do the remodel for the clients just to have them open up their mind to what their their own home could A little bit? Because obviously with the new build, it's wide open and with a remodel it's like you're going to do what? How are you going to do that? And so it's a lot of sketching and a lot of, a lot of times I'll do, a before and after sketch to show them, you know, or a lot of times they sketch over the photo, like, here's the room now, and here's how it's going to look.
- 19:49 And then I peel it off and they go, oh God, wow. That's what that can look like. And again, I love doing it right in front of them because you know, if they if they don't like something, I can change it in a second. And, you know, you're not waiting two weeks for the CAD guy to put it into the computer. So you get that instant, input and you get that instant gratification. one of my questions was going to be how do you build that trust so quickly? But I think you just answered it's the ability to show what their space can be.
- 20:18 Yeah. So quickly. Yeah. The idea. Yeah. And now let's talk about I mean, it's amazing what I can do with a quick photo of a room. All right. In, you know, a Candelaria oriented prompt. And then I will produce the image. And then a lot of times of sketch over that, a few little tweaks and they're like, Holy cow, that's it. That's what I, that's what I've been trying to tell somebody I wanted to do. And you did it in 30s, you know, so I, you know, I think a lot of architects and designers and world in general is afraid of AI, but it's it's another tool that you can use to just convey what's in your head faster.
- 21:00 Yeah. So that's how I'm using it. And I went through that one CAD was invented. I mean, like I said, I got the first Macintosh and I didn't I didn't I wasn't afraid of it. I embraced it, you know? And so it's the same thing. I think we just all need to figure out how to use this new tool to our advantage. So It's funny, I was just talking to one of your employees about asking how I was getting implemented, am doing it for the sketching Yeah, I know a lot of people are using it for mathematics and, you know, all that stuff.
- 21:29 I use it for, artistic side of it. And I love it because I can create quick imagery. And sometimes it's even just composing portions of images. And then I put it all together, you know, like, I need this space or I need this door to be like this. Okay, let's take that door. Let's put it in here. And so it's like a big jigsaw puzzle that I get. I can get it out of my brain quick and put it together. Whereas before I take hours and hours of rendering and drawing and, you know, by then you've lost the, the, the immediate response or the, you know, the energy that you're in at that moment.
- 22:04 obviously the convenience factor Yeah. But are you also noticing improvements in creativity with it, both on your side as well as the Yeah. I for me, it's it's great because I can, I can explore a lot of ideas really quick and rule out the ones I don't like, and then present 2 or 3 ideas to a client said there's here's 2 or 3 ideas I came up with or before there'd be so much reluctance, either because to draw 3 or 4 drawings could take three weeks. And how much money is that? You know, where if I can convey 3 or 4 really cool ideas in a matter of ten minutes, I mean, that's incredible.
- 22:39 Yeah. You know, no brainer. And I've used it in the field, you know. Well, what happens if we paint that wall blue or what if we paint that room green? Well, let me show you here's here's here's that here's a shot and boom boom boom. And people are like, wow, that's so fast. How do you do that? I, I said, well, we like the blue. The blue looks beautiful. Let's do blue. Yeah. So subtle things like that. And I'm just giving you a quick, simple, you know, examples. But I can think of hundreds examples, like, what if we add an awning to a window?
- 23:07 What will that look like? And will it cut the, the cut the sun down. And so just there's it's endless to be honest with you, Well, you've cut that childlike imagination now have the tool to Another great tool to do it with. Yes. did your time at Cbgb. Yes. 18 years. years. You decided to do candle area as a just something on the, something to keep you busy, was funny because I was talking to a young, college student this morning who just wanted to interview me because he's making career choices.
- 23:40 I said, yeah, give me a call, I'll talk to you. And and he asked me the same question. And, you know, I worked with Cbgb for 18 years. And what happened was, the firm started drifting away from residential and more to commercial. And as that happened and George Christiansen was retiring, and I go, you know, I love doing houses. Houses is where my soul is. That's that's my love. And I said, you know, he's retiring. I'm just going to quit and I'm going to open my own firm and it's going to be small.
- 24:12 I'm going to work on my little table with my Macintosh, and I'm going to hike every morning and hang out with my dogs, and I'll work on 1 or 2 houses a year, and that will be it. That was my original vision. Okay, well, that lasted about six months, and within six months I probably had ten houses. And I was doing I said, I gotta hire some people because this is crazy. I'm not going to I'm not going to make it. And it just took off from there. And before I knew it, I had a staff of almost 30 people.
- 24:42 And then 2008 came and wiped everybody out, and we went down to nine people. And fortunately I think 5 or 6 of my people at time are women, and they got pregnant, so they had to leave anyway. So it God kind of worked it out for me. I think I had layer one person, like three people went and started their own firms right when the crash came, four people or whatever got pregnant. And so like it was like, okay, well, I didn't have to layoff one person.
- 25:12 That was one person I wanted to lay off anyway. So it kind of worked out. But through all that, I kind of found my sweet spot of of and it's virtually the same number that I like to take on my tours. It's about 16 people, and it's just it's a good energy because people don't break into clicks and they they work together well. And I found that just kind of my sweet spot and the that handles the volume of houses I want to do. So it's kind of my formula. What do you think? You were always ready to lead a team like that?
- 25:41 Or I mean, you, you talk about wanting the quieter life 1 or 2 houses a year, but then it transforms into this thing where I, at least from my optics, you're one of the busiest men I Yeah. I'm. I'm busy. I like those polar opposites. did you find yourself needing to grow into that, or is that just naturally No. In fact, as a kid, we had this big field behind our house. And this is another story I tell often. But my mom would when we were kids, like five, six years old, my mom would drag us to model homes because my dad was at the Bronco game and and he'd get and she'd get bored.
- 26:13 So she'd piles in the car and we go look at model homes. And, you know, I'd meet with the sales guys and they give me the whole the whole shtick on how to, you know, here's the house, we got these great views. We got this, you know, room, rec room with a pool table and blah, blah, blah. And I'd go home and then I would subdivide the back, the back field, and then I'd get kids from the neighborhood and say, okay, we got to, we got to rope this off, and this is going to be a lot here. We got to build a road this way. I had roads going through the whole field, and then I would make brochures and then a Lego house.
- 26:45 Of all the different houses. And then I would sell them to my relatives. They'd come stay with us like they. And I had to hope we had a basement. So in the basement I would, I would lay out my sales room with, with the all the models built, and then I would sell it to them for like $5 or a dollar, whatever it was back then. So I've been doing this forever. Yeah, it's just been part of my gig since I was like five years old. seem like such a renaissance Why architecture? What?
- 27:15 Why that pursuit out of all of them? I think about that all the time because there are so many things I wish I would have done or could have done, but it's it's the one thing that I love doing. I work probably on average, 12 to 14 hours a day. And I tell people it's not work. I'm golfing. I love what I do. It's it's I'm having fun. You know, I look at the I timesheet, I go, I put 16 hours in the day. Yeah. Because I had so much fun. Look at this drawing that I did.
- 27:44 And so to me it's it's really not even work, you know. Yeah, I get tired. I mean, if you played six, if you played 36 holes of golf, you probably be tired too. But you had a good day, right? So it's it's, it's that's basically how it is for me. So I've been doing that for 45 years, But you, you take time to decompress. Yeah. And I, we travel, my wife and I travel and and, you know, Isabelle is been one of the best things that's ever happened to me because, she's my third wife.
- 28:15 I finally got smart married someone that's in the same field and works as crazy as I do. And we work together, and we travel together, and we have fun together, and we cook together. And so it's perfect. You know, we we both love working and playing together. Well, people always talk about life, work balance. You know what it is? It's it's life working together. We found how to balance it. It's called working and living in the same thing. And we just we do. It's everything we do has to do with work and has to do with living.
- 28:45 It's just combined. And you've done a great job of combining all these different passions that you Yeah. You want one thing. Yes. So and. Yeah. Well we do too I mean I enjoy it, I enjoy it as much as they do. your clients will drive around and they'll start to notice. I like that house. Oh, and they're all military. So I'll tell you a funny story. I just told the system the other day, and I had I'd forgotten a story. I had an instance where, one client put their house up for sale, another client put their house up for sale, another client put their house up for sale, and another client put their house up for sale.
- 29:22 And totally unplanned. They all bought each other's house. So it was a four house swap and none of these clients knew each other. And they didn't even know. A lot of them didn't even know they were buying another Candelaria house. Some of them did, but they didn't know whose, and no one knew the whole story till after it all happened. So some downsizing. So some upsides and downsides. Someone from modern to Santa Barbara I mean it was just it was crazy. Never seen anything like that before.
- 29:52 obviously every house you you're making completely unique to the Yeah. something you've never done. What do you keep consistent across these? Why do why do people looking for homes somehow pick out that the candle area ones have something special you know, I've tried to figure out what that is. And I've talked to a lot of realtors about what they think it is. And they always say your house has a certain feel. And I think what that feel comes from is I tend to do my room sizes unless someone says I need a, you know, ginormous bedroom, it's, you know, 40 by 80 or whatever.
- 30:27 I tend to make my rooms. I've kind of developed my sweet spot for what feels comfortable to people and what scale feels appropriate. And so I tend to use that same formula for my room sizes and same with heights. Like, you know, you don't want a bedroom that's 40ft tall. Maybe you do. I don't know, but I've developed kind of what that feels like, where it feels comfortable and cozy to people. And then the other thing that's really big for me is just I'm a Libra, so I like things very balanced, very aligned.
- 31:00 I don't like like I said earlier, I do like windows, like half in the room, half out of the room. Like if I'm walking down the hall. That window needs to be perfectly centered. And as you go through my spaces, you don't really you don't really know why you feel so comfortable or what it is. It's it's like that feeling. But I think it's it's just all the time. And we spend a lot of time aligning things. As you move through the house, everything lines up. And you'll notice that in the house that we're doing with Tony, I mean, you can look from that living room fireplace all the way to the family room fireplace, and it's on a perfect alignment.
- 31:34 And so it's all those little things that I think your subconscious just feels comfortable with. And you don't really don't know why, but that's why. how do you tap into that. Because that's that's very invisible and difficult for clients to, you know, mentally construct actually seen the plans. How do you tap into that and know what they need I mean, obviously you're designing that feeling right. Right. through a few different rules, maybe some rules you have around architecture.
- 32:02 Yeah. I mean the way we do it is again, going back, we we really developed that list of rooms, at least the spaces. And we put that all into a spreadsheet. And then that adds up to a total square footage. And we go, okay, with, with your wish list and all the rooms that you want to have here and the sizes. Your 7000 square foot house is 10,000ft². You are you sure that's what you want to do? Oh, no. No, we want to say it's seven. Okay. Then we got to consolidate some spaces or we got to get rid of something.
- 32:30 So we do the math first and really make sure we're honing in on exactly the size of the house. They want to build. Then once we have all those rooms, my process is really unique in that we make cutouts of all the rooms, and we have them all on a big table over the site plan, and we have the whole team, including the client, and we're just moving these rooms around. That's great. And like I said, it's it's just organic. We don't know how it's going to that we know where the views are. So we chart those and say, okay, if I put the living room here and if I angle it right there, I'm looking right at pinnacle Peak.
- 33:02 Okay. Is is there another room you want to look at, Pinnacle Peak or what rooms do you want to have look at Pinnacle Peak. Well then we got to arrange those like this. And then as we start arranging them, then it's like we start working out already on the alignments just with the puzzle pieces. Okay. This will align with that. This a little line with this. And we stay in that mode for quite a while. Because my theory is if we don't have the pieces in the right spot, it doesn't matter where the refrigerator goes. You know, we got to think macro. Let's get the macro right first and then we'll put the micro inside of it.
- 33:33 And so it's working with all those alignments, getting everything kind of mathematically laid out on a macro level. And then we get into it on the micro level. Do you see the your clients start to build some comfortability where they start moving the the rooms around? Yeah, I add that that's what I love about it so much is they they that process usually takes about two hours with the whole team. And maybe you don't have the whole team at at that point, but even if you do, usually within two hours, we have a layout with the room pieces and the clients are excited about it.
- 34:09 And very next meeting we kind of turn it into a what we call a block plan, which is basically captures that in CAD with just rectangles and they go, yep, that's where the room is. Yep. And so there's a you, you build this familiar reality with them and it morphs into a plan that they're already familiar with versus laying a plan on them that they just going to pick apart and try to figure out what's wrong with it. It makes sense. So you just you just bring them along slowly from macro to micro versus drawing this elaborate plan.
- 34:41 And then they don't even like half of it because you put the garage on the other side. The from what they were thinking or whatever the case may be. I really like that hands on approach so early on. yeah. And it's a little scary. I mean, a lot of architects like to design in their studio and on there and you know, I'm going to give them a mark Candelaria house whether they like it or not. And here it is. You know, I it's not my house. It's their house. My job is to extract what it is they want to create, how they want to move through the space, how they want to live.
- 35:12 My job is to get how they want to live on the paper, not a plan that I'm going to force them how to live into my plan. That makes sense. course. Yeah. So as they progress through their design process, how are you bringing in or introduce and introducing the tours or the cooking events Oh. what's how does that get introduced during the Yeah, in fact, it just happened today. We just had a new client that we're just starting on, they're working with is is they were working with Isabel first, and they said, well, we're doing so much.
- 35:44 So we better get Marc involved. And they just texted us today, and they go, we we want to go on your Italy tour because we want to get fireplaces and doors and old things from Italy. So it was we were we had one slot left and we were kind of a little stressed of who we were going to fill it with or if we would fill it and boom, it just happened today. So we're really excited. So we'll take them on the tour. And I've had clients that I had one client that we did her house in Desert Mountain. She bought all of her doors for the entire house from from Italy and some of her fireplaces, some of her cabinets.
- 36:18 I had a house where all the roof tiles came from Italy. So that's what's great about that is then the house encapsulates a story, you know, so we go there and we visit and we see the doors and go, oh my gosh, you remember that afternoon? And, on this particular house, her roommate decided not to go look at the doors with her because she was like, I don't want I'm not buying doors. I'm going to stay here and have a nice long bath. She made this big fire in the fireplace, virtually caught the house on fire, and the firemen had to come from the village.
- 36:51 And she goes, that was the best day with those firemen were so cute. And so that story goes forever and ever. And it's just little things like that that, you know, again, we're they're all part of that house now. Yeah, I guess I didn't really consider it until you said it. And it's obvious once I think about it. But by the time they build the house, they've already got memories Oh yeah, they're at full memories. Yeah, And a lot of times like, like we'll do a Santa Barbara house and we'll say, well, let's, let's go to, let's go spend the weekend in Santa Barbara and capture little details here and there.
- 37:21 And of course, you have a great dinner and you remember that. And, you know, so it's again taking the time to make the house special. When you think about the homes that achieve what they set out to create from the plans, what do they have in common? What what are the clients bringing in to them that, you know, help those houses be successful in the design, gosh, every client is so different. I mean, you know, every as your dad probably knows, I mean, every client's personality is different.
- 37:51 Every client's needs are different. So I can't say there's an overriding formula to any of it. And to each job you have to kind of assess the situation and then almost kind of modify your base way of doing things to accommodate the way the client thinks and feels and wants their their journey to go let's take it from this side. How would you help a client side? Is this the right adventure for me? Right. But yet, Oh yeah I don't know I don't know how.
- 38:22 I can benefit from. It. Right. I'm curious you know, and I've had clients where I've interviewed and kind of explained my process and, you know, they're we're not interested in in this. We just want a set of plans. Well, then I'm probably not your right guy. There's plenty of people that you can give you a set of plans, even say for his on the books on the checkout counter has plenty of plans right there in the in the magazines. So part of it is just, you know, really getting to know them and spending time with them and really just figuring out what it is they want.
- 38:54 So it's different with every client. Yeah. And some clients move very fast. Some clients move exceedingly slow. And you just have to you just have to figure out what their paces and and be patient and move along with them, you know. And then some places, you know, we have a lot of places where you have to go through a lot of review processes. We're doing a house in California now. It's a three year review process, you know, so it takes longer to get a permit than it does to design the house.
- 39:25 It's we won't go into all of that. But yeah. We're all. Have you designed homes for. the whole country. I, designed a house in Jamaica. Cabo San Lucas, Alaska. We did, hotel garden area in Italy for a hotel in in, south of, Florence, and houses all over the country. And it's fun because, you know, not everything is Arizona style.
- 39:54 So you get to do something like, we just finished a house in North Carolina that was kind of a modern farmhouse, but historic nature, and it was just so much fun to work over there. And, and with a great client. And, and the builder happens to be going on a wine tour next month. So there's another relationship that, you know, you build and it's that's what it's about. It's about building the relationships. Anything that you find inspires your work as you go outside the country.
- 40:23 Oh, we had travel. I was talking about that this morning, too. Is travel is the refuel of my tank. Not only just looking at architecture and the details, but just the lifestyle and the culture. And because when you think about your house, your house is not just bricks and sticks and and tile, it's it is the three dimensional vessel that guides how you live every day, you know, and it's it's just a big part of forming how your life experiences.
- 40:58 I mean, you wake up, you sleep, you eat, you move around, you entertain your family. But it's in this structure that influences how all those things happen, whether you like it or not. It's influencing how you live every day of your life. So why not make it amazing? You know, and you know, if you're wealthy enough to afford an architect, which is a small percentage of the world. Did you your custom house, why not make it the best thing you could possibly make it?
- 41:28 You you you you made it. You know, make it amazing. So we've been lucky to work with people that get that and really go for it. You know. One of those for my first stuff. Oh, it's so much fun. I mean, it's it's unfortunate. I don't always get it. Yeah. I mean, I think Tony gets to see a lot more than I do. But, you know, one of the, one of the faux clauses in my contract is I get to come cook a candlelit dinner in your Candelaria kitchen when it's all done.
- 42:01 And I've had I've had a lot of clients take me up on it actually, several times. And, that is so much fun to just be in there with them and cook a dinner and and just watch them enjoy the house and be a part of that, So. So were your parents, cooks or did you just find it naturally on You know, my mom is a really good cook. My dad was a good griller. So we always we cooked. My mom and dad cooked all the time. But where I really found the passion was in the early 80s, watching the Food Network, I would be drafting on my table and, you know, there was nothing on sports.
- 42:34 The news is boring, blah blah blah. Like what was, okay, let's try this Food Network. What's this all about? Oh, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, I can do this. This is pretty cool. So I just started getting into it, you know? And then the tours happened, and I saw what cooking did for that, and I just. I made it a part of my repertoire. And it's awesome because I, as you know, I use I use my pay dinner as a means of, auctioning off for charities. And on average, we get 6 to $8000 for one pie, a dish, you know, and we usually double it because we'll split it.
- 43:08 And then they sell two of them, make $12,000. And what's great is, is now we have the dinners here. So these clients, not clients, but these winners of the auction bring 12 of their friends and they're having dinner. Our costumes, all our renderings, all our propaganda on the TV. And, you know, we get we get work from it. So now we're helping a great charity, but we're getting some great exposure from people we would have never met any other way. So it's a win win. speaking of Charity, you've been on the board of habitat for Humanity of Central yeah, at least a handful of years.
- 43:43 Yeah I think I'm coming up on like ten years. Yeah. how did you get involved with them I had a friend that, actually introduced me to them and said, hey, you need to get Mark on your board. He'd be a great addition. And, you know, everyone knows what everyone knows about habitat for humanity. But I didn't really realize what an amazing organization it is and how well-run they are. And once I got on the board, I'm like, I, I could never leave this. I mean, I don't I think there are term limits, but, but yeah, we did the first 3D printed house with them.
- 44:17 I'm very involved. It's just what they do and how they do it and how frugal, but just how, how well they manage the money is incredible. So, I mean, there's a lot of charities where I just like, oh, gosh, I mean, they spend more on their gala than they do helping the family that it's supposed to go for. And, that doesn't happen with habitat. They are really well run. So in 2022, you design the first home to be 3D printed in, up to code Up to code, and permitted and inhabited by real people.
- 44:55 Yeah. Yeah. It was it was interesting because we designed the house during Covid and so everything was done virtually, basically done in on zoom. And the company, the 3D printed company was in Germany. So we were working with a German company, and then they were trying to logistically bring the 3D printer here during Covid. It was crazy what we went through to get this house done, but we worked directly with Tim because if you look in the code, there's nothing about 3D printed code requirements.
- 45:23 There was nothing in the code about what you have to do to make a code compliant 3D printed house. So he's like, well, I guess we can permit this, but I don't know how we're going to do it. And so we had meetings with them virtually every week. We met with them as we developed the building and we worked with structural, Dominic Petrocelli and, we've I mean, I think they virtually now can write a building code based on our 3D printed house and how to how to do it.
- 45:54 So, we got it permitted and built, and we learned a lot building in July with 3D printed concrete that you it cured too fast and we had a burlap wrap it we had to tear walls down and redo. So it was a learning process, learning curve. But it was really cool. And again, you know, part of habitat involves hands on involvement from the end home user. So they were out there while we were doing all this 3D printing and, and and I got to cook for them in the 3D printed house on the 3D printed island.
- 46:29 And that was pretty cool. For a lot of first. Yeah, a lot of first. And they still live in there and they're they love it. They love the house. So, so from a builder's perspective, this is insane to me that you could accomplish this, especially with the added constraint Yeah, yeah based on how you describe this, this doesn't sound like an isolated thing. You know, do you see a future where. Yeah. I mean, I know the land, our homes. I know there's a lot of, big home companies that are starting to do more 3D printing.
- 46:59 And again, we learn so much from it that we could probably do it again. And we're, we're constantly exploring options of, of that with habitat. That's part of our mission is to always look for and explore new building methods and materials and systems. Any innovations you think are coming around the corner that. Oh, gosh, I don't know. I think the 3D printing has a lot of potential for sure. And then there's so many integrate new wall systems and things like that that are are amazing.
- 47:30 I think. I think our biggest problem with habitat right now is land. I mean, the cost of land has gone. So with that, where instead of single family houses, we're having to do more multifamily houses to get more people onto more expensive land. So our building type is having to change in order to get people into their first house, you So this is 25 years kind of where it is on Yep. 20. It would be 20 over 26, 26 years.
- 48:00 Yeah. Years. What do you see as the future of candelabra design? Well, I'm not getting younger. So, you know, I've got two partners to. Matheson is one of my partners, and he's been with me over 20 years, and and, he he is a, architect. And then Evelyn is, been running my firm for over 20 years, too. So the two of them have been with me for a long ride. And my hope is to keep going as long as I can. I like, and I love what I do.
- 48:29 But I've got a great crew of young people here now that I just love. They're like, probably one of the best crews I've ever had. They are learning so fast. They work so hard. I'm shocked to see, people sending me emails at 3 a.m.. I haven't seen it in a few years, and this group does. I'm like, wow, okay, I got some work worker bees here. I haven't seen that in a while, so I kind of see this great work ethic that I haven't seen in several years. And all of a sudden it's like right under my roof, which I love.
- 48:59 And it's not like I want to work in one to death, but I they I can tell they love what they do and they love what they're learning. And just the enthusiasm and the energy is I love that, I love being around that. So I hope we keep designing wonderful houses. We got a couple cool resort projects in the works right now, one in Utah and one in Mesa, and so I've always loved I got to, work on Enchantment and Sedona and Castle Hot Springs.
- 49:29 So in El Charro here in Paradise Valley. So those projects are always fun because they're just like big homes, Well, I want to be respectful of your time. So I think it's pretty obvious, where people can find you. What I would instead ask is, where do you recommend people start? You know, we have a great website, so check out our website. Everything's on there. Our podcast is on there. Our, tours are on there. We're on Instagram quite a bit. We love showing what we're doing and what's going on.
- 49:59 From cooking to houses to everything with our tours. So we're easy to find. Google us. We're all over the place. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, well, it's been great collaborating with your firm. I love it, you know, I love your father. And I just hope we get to do more because I think, both of our clients would, would benefit greatly. Oh, yeah. No, we we love it. So we appreciate everything that you've done. You know, we appreciate the the mutual, projects we have. And. Yeah, we're excited to share that one.
- 50:28 As soon Oh. It's going to be made is one of my favorite houses of all time. And the clients have become great friends. And that's what it's all about. I mean, it's just that's so rewarding. Yeah. No, I, I'm there every other Yeah. Good. Updates. And, you know, every time Well, we're coming to the exciting part now. It's like it's all coming together. And it's just every time I go out there, it's like you said. God, it's just. I walk out of there, I go, this is amazing. and the view seems to get better It's amazing.
- 50:59 Well, Mark, thank you Thank you. wonderful. Excellent. Thank you.
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