Make the office a destination, not just an obligation

ELIZABETH BRINK: If you come into it with binary thinking, you’re not going to be able to make it work. And so I think that’s part of the commitment of being in a co-leadership model. You are committed to having those tough conversations.

JEFF BERMAN: Elizabeth Brink is co-CEO of Gensler, the iconic architecture and design firm. NVIDIA’s futuristic headquarters in California, yep, that was Gensler. The entire block that houses Disney’s New York City offices, also Gensler. The surprisingly pleasant new terminal at that major airport, very likely Gensler. The company and its impressive footprint allow them to take on bigger and bigger challenges.

ANDY COHEN: Challenges like climate change, who better than us to take on this huge challenge, which is the moral and business imperative of our lifetimes to solve climate change? Buildings are 40% of all carbon created in the world.

BERMAN: I’m Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, two impressive leaders from the architecture and design firm, Gensler. Elizabeth Brink is the co-CEO of the company and leads its global team of nearly 7,000 people. Andy Cohen, now co-Chair, was Gensler’s previous co-CEO. He has spent more than four decades helping scale the company. We talk about why they’ve doubled down on a collaborative leadership model, designing for difficult generational shifts in the workforce, and how smarter buildings can combat climate change.

[THEME MUSIC]

Elizabeth, Andy, welcome to Masters of Scale.

ELIZABETH BRINK:  Good to be here. Thanks for having us.

COHEN:  Fantastic to be here. Thank you for having us.

Copy LinkWhat is Gensler?

BERMAN:  Thrilled to have you. Can we just start with, what is Gensler?

BRINK:  Gensler is a global architecture and design firm celebrating 60 years. This year we have 57 offices around the world, more than 6,000 really creative, incredible professionals working across this platform to provide design and architecture for our clients.

BERMAN:  And when you say design and architecture, I think I have an idea of what that is, but I’ve also seen examples of Gensler’s work that goes maybe beyond. Can you just give us a sense of the scope of the work that Gensler does?

BRINK: It’s really a scale from designing a brand label for a wine bottle, or a marketing campaign for a brand, to something as large scale as designing cities, and urban spaces, stadiums, airports, workplaces. It really goes the whole gamut. And what makes Gensler different or what we really talk about is it’s beyond just creating the spaces and places. What we’re really focused on is creating the experience of the people in the spaces. So it’s really about developing the human experience. And that’s when you’re saying it’s so much more beyond just the building and the spaces. It is really thinking through what that experience of the people in those places is going to be.

COHEN: Our vision is to create a better world through the power of design. Last year, we worked in over 100 countries, so we’re really creating design influence around the globe. It’s a unique position to be in than many other architectural firms that are just focused on one country or one practice. We’re extremely diverse from a geography standpoint and from a practice standpoint.

BERMAN: Take us back, if you would. You said Gensler’s about 60 years old now. Where did it start? What’s the origin of the company?

BRINK: It really started with a vision that Art Gensler had about reinterpreting what it meant to be an architect in the workplace, and creating workplaces that weren’t just rolling out the same space for every client, but workplaces that really helped organizations achieve their business goals. So that’s where it came from. Always very client oriented, really focused again on the experience of the people in those spaces and transforming that industry. Art Gensler is known as someone who completely transformed corporate interiors, then grew into architecture, into different types of projects, education projects, even sports projects.

COHEN: Yeah. And Art really started this, which was looking at it from the inside out. Projects from the inside out, as most architects of the time were looking at buildings from the outside in, Art looked at it from a user experience, how people feel in a space, the emotions that come from people in a space. And that’s very different than most other architects.

Copy LinkInside Gensler’s “secret sauce”

BERMAN: What has to happen practically, procedurally, that you’re doing it differently from others who are looking at it from outside in as opposed to inside out?

BRINK: Yeah. I love that you asked that question. We always talk about the secret sauce, and it’s as much about a mindset, always thinking about the human experience first, bringing in different perspectives. The way we create our teams brings in a multidisciplinary point of view. We look at our clients as true partners. We have a whole practice that focuses on understanding our client’s businesses, so that we can truly understand what their needs are and solve, not for just what they’re saying the problem is, but what the underlying issues are that they want to drive forward.

BERMAN: Does this make it hard to hire? How are you building teams of people who get the Gensler way and want to work this way?

COHEN: We call it a one firm, firm culture. And it’s one seamless, integrated organization around the world. And we really are looking for a diversity of talent, a diversity of ideas, because we believe innovation comes from diversity. Diversity of thinking, diversity of geographies, the diversity of languages. We’re a firm of close to 7,000 people now. And the only way you can lead an entrepreneurial culture like that, is by having people from lots of different backgrounds, and different places with different perspectives.

BRINK: It’s interesting that you ask if that makes it harder to hire. I actually think it’s a key differentiator at this point. When we do hire, they want to be a part of it, because it is so different from what you see at some other design firms, which are maybe a lot top down or siloed, where you only get to work on the types of projects that you’ve always worked on. There’s a lot of opportunity to spread your wings at Gensler, and people really respond to that when they think about what they want to have in their career.

COHEN: This is my 45th year with the firm. I started when I was five years old.

BERMAN: Obviously, clearly.

COHEN: A very, very young man. When I came to the firm, we were probably less than close to 100 people, and now we’re close to 7,000 people. So I had a very unique perspective on our firm. And it all started with, as Elizabeth was talking about, Art Gensler’s entrepreneurial approach. And I had the opportunity to become head of the LA office in the early ’90s. And then in 2005, I became co-CEO with my partner, Diane Hoskins, of the firm. We knew when Art was stepping down that there could only be one model that would work, and that’s a co-leadership model.

Copy LinkWhy co-leadership is the right model for Gensler

BERMAN: So a lot of companies don’t like a co-leadership model. One back to pat, one butt to kick, accountability, et cetera. Why was co-leadership the right answer for Gensler? Why is it?

COHEN: Because we really believe that everyone has aces and spaces. Things they’re great at and not so great at.

BERMAN: Doesn’t sound like the first time you’ve used that line.

COHEN: I’ve used it a lot. In fact, in our firm, we have two leaders that are leading every office, every practice area. Throughout our firm, we believe so strongly in co-leadership, because if everyone has aces and spaces, when people come together with different aces, that’s when the sparks fly. One plus one equals five. We get 48 hours in a day instead of 24 hours in a day to lead around the world. We don’t know any other type of leadership than co-leadership. It really has transformed our firm because we’re able to bring forward the best ideas. For example, my partner and I, Diane, we’re very, very different leaders. But together we cover so much more ground than one leader. And that makes a huge difference to our people because my aces, the things that I’m great at may not be Diane’s, and we don’t always agree on things. But that tension and those edges that come together are what create even better innovation and better ideas that we’re moving forward with.

So it really has become very embedded in our culture and throughout our firm.

BERMAN: As you pair people, whether it’s Elizabeth, you and your co-CEO, or the co-heads of your Berlin office or whatever it might be, are you looking for they’ve already worked together and shown that they can work well together? Is there pattern matching from the past of where partnerships have worked and haven’t worked? How are you figuring out who to empower jointly? It’s hard enough to hire one good person, to hire two good people and trust that they’re going to work well together feels like a tough putt.

BRINK: Yeah. I think collaboration is such a part of design and the design process. And so all of us, as we’ve been developing our careers, we’ve had to be collaborative. That’s just how great projects happen. It’s in the culture, in the design culture. So it’s in all of our DNA. There are some industries where that’s not a part of the culture, and where this type of model might be a little bit harder. So building on that, when we do look at leaders, and partnering leaders, and figuring out how those aces and spaces are going to work, a lot of these leaders have worked together before. We’ve gotten to see them on firm-wide initiatives, or on task forces, or on our management committee or working on projects together. And we have so much of that internally that we can see where each of them shines, and really understand where they’re going to be able to focus.

If someone is incredibly externally focused, and they have a partner who really understands how to develop people in the organization, that can often be a really, really great partnership. We do want people who push each other, but what is really important for all of our leaders is that ability to communicate. Because that communication, that collaborative spirit, that mindset of building trust, that is the foundation for all of it.

BERMAN: And that makes a ton of sense to me in some new ways. So what happens when there’s a disagreement between co CEOs?

COHEN: There’s so much trust between us as a team, that we usually defer to one another. In other words, we both make our case in a discussion, and then invariably one of us will say, “You know what? You take that one. I trust you. I don’t necessarily agree with you, but I trust you. And let’s get back together again and discuss this once we explore this possibility.” So we’re always deferring to one another. I think the core to collaborative leadership is trust, trust and respect. For Diana and I, we’ve been together for close to 25 years. Unbelievable trust. We can finish each other’s sentences. Yet, as I said, we come from different places, different backgrounds, but we always coalesce together and always, always trust each other.

BERMAN: Is it just, disagree and commit? It’s a binary, right? It’s A or B, it’s one or two, zero, one, whatever. Is that what you have to do?

BRINK: At some point it is. You have to say, “Listen, I feel really strongly about this, and this is a priority for me.” I will say also, Jordan and myself, who’s my co-CEO, we often go to Andy or Diane, and this is what’s wonderful about it. We have mentors here. We have others who are not so wrapped into the decision to be able to get a different set of opinions, and they will give really fantastic advice about how to navigate through the situation, and often just another perspective that clicks it in for either one of us to say, “Okay, yes, I can flex on this side of things and I understand that perspective.” So it’s just a process like any relationship, where if you come into it with a binary thinking, you’re not going to be able to make it work. And so I think that’s part of the commitment of being in a co-leadership model.

You are committed to having those tough conversations. For us, they’re usually based so much on the core values of the firm, and a deep understanding of those guiding principles, those core 

values. So usually we can really navigate around that. That’s what I’ve found.

BERMAN: Still ahead, more with Andy and Elizabeth about how they design offices in which people actually want to spend time.

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Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and more on our YouTube channel, and be sure to check out the link in the show notes to subscribe to our newsletter. 

Copy LinkAddressing climate change through architecture

Andy, when you joined Gensler, how big was the company, both the employees and revenue, roughly?

COHEN: We had a little over 100 people at the time, and a revenue around $20 million at that time.

BERMAN: And you’re now about 7,000 people.

COHEN: We’re just surpassing this magic number, which is $2 billion, and that scale really gives us the ability to take on some of the world’s greatest challenges, challenges like climate change. Who better than us to take on this huge challenge, which is the moral and business imperative of our lifetimes to solve climate change? Well, design and buildings are 40% of all carbon created in the world. So we have the ability to really use our technologies, our strategies to really help through the building environment, save a whole bunch of CO2 and deal with climate change.

BERMAN: Concrete is obviously a massive driver of CO2 emissions. Is that an opportunity for Gensler as well? How are you approaching this at a, pun intended, and apologies for it, more concrete level?

BRINK: I love the pun.

BERMAN: I thank you for the courtesy laugh. I appreciate it.

BRINK: Yeah. It’s a really great opportunity area for us. We’ve been doing a lot around materials, and setting up new industry standards for materials. And where we’re moving next is in structural systems like concrete. How do we really push the industry to move forward in setting different standards for how we use concrete, or experimenting with different types of concrete use. Also, mass timber is another one that we’re really leaning into, and how do we use those different kinds of structural systems? We have the scale to work very closely with incredible partners in the industry to identify those opportunities.

COHEN: This is a global problem, not a local problem. So we’re working as an example on materials, we’re working with the largest concrete makers in the world, and they’re coming up with different mixes that emit much less CO2 in the environment.

BERMAN: It strikes me also that, we’re seeing increased intensity of weather. We’re seeing hurricanes at a scale and frequency we’ve never seen before, tornadoes, et cetera. That must present real design challenges and opportunities. How are you approaching that as well, especially as we look out over the next decade where it’s forecast to get much worse?

BRINK: All of our clients are seeing this as well. And so it’s really becoming one of their key priorities, designing for resilience. Otherwise, they’re just setting themselves up for real challenges. So we’re looking at not only fireproof materials, siting, how do we site buildings in different areas so that they’re more fireproof, for example? 

We’re here in Los Angeles. Obviously, fires are a big thing that we’re all thinking about right now, especially coming out of the last year. And it’s really as much about where do we put buildings? How do we design them so that they have clearance around them, we’re using the right materials? And what’s really incredible is that clients are really seeing this as a must have right now, not a nice to have or a could do. It is a core part of what they need to be solving for. And now it costs too much not to be sustainable and resilient, and they’re really seeing that difference.

And so finding the ways from very early on in the process to make those decisions, which costs a lot less if you’re doing it early on in the process.

Copy LinkIs there a Gensler style?

BERMAN: Given the approach that you all take, given the scale, the range of work you do, and the little bit of browsing that I did preparing for our conversation, I don’t think there’s a Gensler style. There’s nothing you can look at and go, “That’s obviously a Gensler project.” Fair to say?

BRINK: Yes, absolutely. Actually, it’s really great that you say that. When we’re talking about scaling, and across the incredible geographies that we’re in with the different types of clients, with the different types of industries, we have a huge number of incredible designers who do have their vision, their style, their way of approaching things, and some of them really do connect with certain clients. It’s just you’re not going to see that across all of Gensler.

We call it a constellation of stars. We don’t have one single star, but it really is that constellation. And so they’re each shining really brightly in their own way. One of the things that we love is that we can give different designers with different visions that platform to be able to shine. I think even when I was in design school, it was, if you are just about a style, that’s incredibly limiting. If you’re about an approach and an outcome, that’s much more about opening up the aperture of design. And so we’re about creating spaces that enrich the human experience. When we have a shared purpose, that’s really what you start to see. And I hope when you’re looking at the images, what you’re seeing are people engaging in the spaces. That’s the core thread that comes through a lot of the work, rather than just a single style that you’d be able to note. But hopefully they’re activated, people are engaged in the spaces, they’re uplifting spaces.

So it’s more the outcome of the spaces than just how they’re looking.

Copy LinkDesigning the new NVIDIA campus

BERMAN:  Can you give us a story of a recent design challenge that Gensler took on, and how you super serve your client on the project?

COHEN:  A great example I think is we are designing projects for NVIDIA, and NVIDIA is the largest market cap. And what’s phenomenal about the process was, we were working with the CEO and he wanted to incorporate their AI techniques, and latest software and hardware into the design. So we used those AI techniques to design the project from the inside out. So we had teams around the world bringing ideas from around the world, to the largest market cap firm in the world for their new headquarters, and we were able to use these ideas from around the world as the innovation moving forward.

BERMAN: And how did Jensen and NVIDIA want you to use AI in that process?

COHEN: In this case, he wanted the buildings to feel almost like – they were named after Star Trek. One building’s called the Enterprise. And so the idea was to minimize walking distances, the buildings are built in a triangle. We came up with this idea of a triangle, it’s the shortest walking distance, with all the innovation labs in the center of the triangle. And that allowed for groups to meet very quickly and innovate very quickly, and from building to building to get from one building to another. And then using AI, the building’s in a triangle, well, the entire ceilings are in a triangle, skylights are in a triangle. We used the ability of AI to really track the sun in the sky with these skylights to bring natural light into the space, and optimize the lighting within the space. That’s just an example of one example of using their technology to design the space.

BERMAN: And then Elizabeth, how is AI now informing more of what you’re doing after the NVIDIA project?

BRINK: Wow. So a project like that, it opens up and unlocks the way a lot of people are thinking about things. So based on that project and a number of other projects, we’ve really developed an entire suite of tools, so that we are able to use those tools on all of our projects every day at a different scale. So we are doing AI-enabled blocking and planning opportunities, AI-enabled sustainability analysis. And even more so than that, some of what came out of that was understanding how people are engaging in the space.

COHEN: AI has been for us a revelation, as Elizabeth was saying. Now we can visualize spaces more quickly. So it used to take us three months or six months. Now within a week, we can have multiple ideas and take our clients and bring them right into the space, making them feel the emotion of being actually in their finished space. There’s nothing better in an architect’s world, a designer’s world, to put a person right where they’re going to be in the future. Or a client would ask us, we design airports. “What’s the future of the airport? What’s the future of an entertainment center? What’s the future of a sports arena?” And we’re able to show them the future.

BERMAN: And you’re using VR and AR to help with that? Is that part of it?

COHEN: Oh, VR and AR.

Copy LinkBuilding offices that people want to work in

BERMAN: I’m reading a book right now on the next pandemic, because there’s so much joy, let’s find yet more. One of the things that I was struck by in reading this book is the extent to which as we return to office, now you guys very much have an office culture. Air refresh rates in offices is one critical protection against virus transmission. And so I’m curious, is that something you’re thinking about proactively beyond the look of the space, and the practical use of this space in terms of how people move and what have you, are you going all the way down that far? Is that part of how you’re using AI to improve the work that you’re doing?

BRINK: We are definitely using AI and data in general to understand, particularly for our clients who have large scale portfolios, to understand how to better optimize their space. And that could be everything from understanding daylight, you’re talking about air flows, we’re talking about overall portfolio usage and utilization, which spaces people are coming into. We are absolutely taking all that information and figuring out the ways to turn all of that data into intelligence.

BERMAN: There are two major factors that we see and my friends who lead teams have experienced in the last five years. One is COVID, and a move to remote and hybrid work. Now it feels like more of a push to be back in office. And two, is just generational differences in terms of what people want from in person versus remote or hybrid, and how different generations want to use workspace. Could you share a little bit about how those two forces, both independently and collectively, are changing what space design looks and feels like and how you’re approaching it?

COHEN: Sure. I think coming out of COVID, what we’re finding through all our research is you have to make the office a destination, not an obligation, a place that people want to be, not that they have to be. And what we’re finding is that creating that sense of choice, the idea that you can work anywhere in the office, the flexibility to be able to create different work settings. What we’re doing is we’re taking out rows and rows of desks, and we’re creating way more collaboration space. Everyone really wants to collaborate a lot. So we’re creating three person conference rooms, five person conference rooms, living rooms with couches so that people have that ability to work in those different work settings. Also with a hybrid nature. So in these spaces there’s screens where you can have Zoom calls where there are people outside the office and inside the office. But the entire nature of the workplace is radically changing.

This has been the biggest revolution in workplace since the Industrial Revolution, where work is changing radically. How people work is changing radically.

BRINK: It’s interesting because what we’ve found too when you talk about generations, is that it’s actually the younger generations that want to be in the office even more. They see that they’re learning much more when they’re in the office. They see that they’re creating that social capital that’s so important for career building. We saw that in our own offices. It was younger people who were coming in. It was our new hires who were really coming in and driving for us to be there. We use those data points to talk to different generations. We also talk to them about, what are they trying to achieve? It’s really about what they’re trying to achieve. There are some benefits to having flexibility and hybrid, but creating culture, and creating collaboration, and learning, that’s not one of the benefits. You really have to get people together to be able to do that.

And what’s also interesting is that a lot of the more senior leaders are seeing that now. They’re seeing the repercussions of not having that deep culture, of not having people together. So there’s that kind of shift. But to Andy’s point, the whole point is that it has to be a space that works for people, that gives them something. There is no generation that wants to go into an office, go through that commute just to sit at a desk that is just the same as what they could be doing at home.

There has to be something more. People don’t want to just be sitting at home where they’re so disconnected from their communities. We’re seeing workplaces that really activate the neighborhoods around them. That’s another key element. We call it, depending on what city you’re in, the 20-minute city or the 15-minute city, the walkability of the neighborhood, that you could find everything there. Those are the places people want to be in. And so workplace and city making are really, really interconnected. That’s part of the revolution we’re seeing.

BERMAN:  And it strikes me also, the loneliness crisis in America, obviously other places in the world, but acutely we’re experiencing in America, is in part a consequence of this move away from a dedicated office space, particularly one that is in a 15 or 20-minute city, amenity rich, places to go hang out, have lunch, have a coffee, what have you. How do you think about Gensler’s role in – you are doing social engineering. I don’t mean that with any negative connotation, but that is a practical effect of the work that you do. How do you think about your broader responsibility or the impact of your work on the broader communities that you serve?

BRINK: Yeah. I love this line of thinking that we’re going down actually. In one of our workplace surveys, we do workplace surveys almost every year, and have really been able to track some key ideas. And one of our workplace surveys that came out one or two years into the pandemic, we were talking about making friends outside of your generation, and connecting with people who are outside of your social group, or of different race or age. And found that 61% of people that we surveyed in this survey said that they made friends, built relationships with people who were outside of their race, religion, age demographic, at work. And so you realize just how important that is for people understanding the diversity around them, for people, just understanding that there are differences among people and that you can build relationships with people who are not in your individual bubble.

So expand it out to the cities as well, and people are meeting in plazas, in transit hubs, in entertainment venues. So the more we can bring people together, the workplace is a particularly rich environment for that.

COHEN:  All of our research, all of our focus is shaping the future of cities. And that’s going to be about sustainable cities. It’s going to be about, we mentioned the 20-minute city of making sure that we’re designing the right neighborhoods, the right communities, connected cities, so important. So we think that the future of design is very much about cities, including the idea that soon we’re going to have autonomous cars. And if we have autonomous cars, the ability to take our city streets back for people, not CO2 infested cars in the middle of our cities. We can create walkable cities again, vibrant cities, more landscaping and trees, more alfresco dining, more places to be together and come together.

BERMAN: And you all have gone to a five-day week in office. How’d you make that decision and have you had a lot of pushback on that call?

BRINK: We’ve actually really spent a lot of time thinking about it, and it’s really about pushing forward to who we need to be for the future. So it was about being clear that we are open, we are in office, we expect our teams to be working together five days a week. We expect our leaders to be there with their teams five days a week, not working from home, but also being out with clients, also traveling, also being out in our cities. And I would say overall, it’s gone really well. Did we lose some people who had specific family things that they really needed to take care of? Did we lose some people who moved pretty far away during COVID? Sure, of course. Did we also get some people who are very excited to be able to be back in the office and to be connected? Yes.  We need to be a collaborative organization.

And so let’s figure out how to make this happen, not getting stuck on the decision making, what numbers of days and are we checking boxes about people? But again, really the why and why we need to do this for the future.

BERMAN: Look, I’m going to sound 100 years old here, but I learned so much being in office, just sitting and watching how other people do what they do. And then maybe being able to walk and get a coffee with them and ask questions, when this happened. Scott Bellow also talks about how do you think you’re going to get promoted into the much bigger job if you’re not building the social bonds and showing your bosses what you’re doing?

BRINK:  Yeah. And if people don’t know you, if people haven’t built that relationship with you, because as we started the conversation talking about trust and relationships, that’s so much a part of what being a leader in an organization is. And if people don’t know you, they can’t build the trust with you. They don’t have those experiences, and you can’t build those over Zoom. I think it’s also really interesting when you’re talking about the different generations. All of our kids are back in school and they are there in person. Colleges, that did not work virtual for those kids. And so you think about the generations, they actually really want to be connected. And so that’s the generation that’s coming into the workplace.

COHEN: I think there’s another residual that came out of this, and that is with our clients. Because we’re a global firm, we have 55 offices around the world. So before COVID, we were already on video conference calls before most other people were on. We were used to that medium, but now our clients are used to it. I was on a call this morning with Saudi Arabia, another call with London early in the morning, and then later in the night I’m on a video call, Zoom call with Tokyo. That ability to connect now has actually helped us a great deal to be able to move forward with our clients and have instant connectivity around the world. I think it’s made a huge difference for our practice.

Copy LinkWhat people get wrong about the design process

BERMAN: What’s one thing, Andy, that people get wrong about the design process?

COHEN: People think that we go away into some black box, and we design and we come back with the solution. And I think our best designs that we create are where we’re interacting with our clients, listening to their vision, listening to their goals, and sharing ideas, sharing options with them. So we’re getting their feedback so that at the end of the day, they feel like it’s their design, and we’re showing them how to create it. That’s when we’ve been really successful.

BERMAN: And Elizabeth, what’s a question that everyone who’s undertaking a design process should ask the firm that they’re contemplating using to help them with the project?

BRINK: Well, I think the firm should definitely ask all the clients, what do you really want to get out of this? What are you really trying to achieve? What do you want for your people? What do you want for your business? Undertaking a design project is a huge opportunity. A huge lever for change, for transformation of any business. Every design firm should make sure that all of their clients are utilizing that opportunity and really thinking bigger. Clients should always take that moment to step back and say, “What do we want to get out of this?” Not just who’s going to do it the most expedient way.

Copy LinkHiding Easter eggs and surprising moments

BERMAN: Yeah. I was part of designing a new office space for a company I was helping lead about 10 years ago. And the founder had very specific ideas about what he wanted from the space. And we put a couple of little hidden touches, almost Easter eggs into the space that maybe only he, perhaps his wife as well would know were for him, but they were there. And it was almost like a little wink. And I’m curious if you have a favorite example or two of anything like that in design projects that you and Gensler worked on?

BRINK: I would say one of my favorites is up in our recently completed San Francisco office. So the firm was founded in San Francisco by Art Gensler and his wife, Drue. And so there’s a storied history in the San Francisco office. And so throughout that office, there’re little snippets of photos of Art and Drue from when they were much younger. But my favorite one is, they have the address plaque from the very first office location of M. Arthur Gensler and Associates. And it’s up there on the shelves with some other artifacts. And I know that for so many of us, coming in and every time we see it just feels like a real connection to where the firm started, and to those founders. The historical photos are great because some of them are hilarious, of course. But that address plate for me is just a real personal connection.  And I see it every time I go up to that office.

BERMAN:  Andy?

COHEN: So my Easter egg is on a building we completed about 15 years ago. It’s called 2000 Avenue of the Stars. And it really is two buildings in one. So the building has a large aperture or hole in it. And if you go across the street to the Century Plaza Hotel and you look across the street, through the aperture, the perfect photograph is the Hollywood sign is perfectly framed in that aperture in the building.

BERMAN:  Oh, this is so great.

COHEN: And a lot of people don’t know that, but that Hollywood sign, so I have a picture on my wall of the aperture or the hole in 2008 and the Hollywood sign exactly right in the middle of that hole.

BERMAN:  I have been in both of those buildings and I never knew that. And I’m going to check that out. Thank you both for being on Masters of Scale.

BRINK:  Thank you. This was great.

BERMAN: Thanks again to Elizabeth Brink and Andy Cohen for joining us. It is inspiring to see how the team at Gensler uses a collaborative leadership model to unlock innovation and fuel growth. It’s an important reminder of how powerful a well-designed space can be for shaping our culture. I’m Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening.