Mecanoo

And we were asked, a team of designers was sort of asked, how do you retain the soul of that beloved theater while kind of completely rethinking what a dance venue needs to be today and in the future.

So we teamed up with Meccano, who is a design firm out of the Netherlands, to work as the local architect and answer that call in a design competition for Jacob's Pillow to embark upon this journey of reimagining the new Doris Duke Theater.

And there's a specific rock that they defined as sort of the highest point of the mountaintop.

And one talked about how it was Jacob's Ladder, you know, to the sky.

Exposed cross-laminated timber panels and glulam beams create a warm, inviting interior that recalls the original theater's traditional A-frame timber construction.

So the use of mass timber for the project, I think, was something that was considered from the start of the project.

This is Sarah Navrati, associate architect at MeCanoo.

In part because of the existing facilities on campus, pretty much all of the buildings on site are timber structure, whether it's post and beam or other lightweight framing.

Wan-jen Lin is an award-winning architect who has worked on Wei Wuying National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, along with her husband, Qingmao Hou.

Together they formed Studio Hou & Lin, an architecture and urban design firm.

And some of the projects that they have worked on as Studio Ho and Lin include the Echo Across the Harbor public art installation located at Kaohsiung's Penglai Commercial Port and the Kaohsiung train station.

Just recently, in September of 2026, Echo Across the Harbor won the Artistic Creation Award at Taiwan's 10th Public Art Awards presented by the Ministry of Culture.

And that was a kind of love story, actually.

Because at that time, my boyfriend was in Francine Hoban's studio.

Francine Hoban was the principal architect of Meccano Architects from the Netherlands.

And in 2006, they were in the completion of Wui Wui.

It's more that you kind of evolve, and it becomes a natural path of, of your own contributions to the profession.

But the, the way that this time that it worked, I was reached out to by a firm hired by the university who kind of looks at who might be good and interested in the country and was, was asked to apply.

I did that, and yeah, we did Zoom interview.

It was very formal, formal questions.

That was George's conversation with Jim Stevens.

Returning podcast guest Max Strang grew up around a Gene Leedy-designed family home in Winter Haven, Florida.

He later apprenticed under Leedy, and in 1998, founded his own firm.

Max has specialized in houses made to survive Florida's heat, humidity, and hurricanes Back in the day, his limestone rock house in Coconut Grove stood in for a drug lord's jungle lair in Miami Vice.