A. Brooks Fischer unlocks the key to managing a team of architects - and gives sound advice for future leaders in the field.

For more than 60 years, Newman Architects has built a respected practice, a strong portfolio, and lasting client relationships.

As the firm entered its third generation of leadership, President and CEO A. Brooks Fischer saw an opportunity to build on that foundation by creating a clearer structure for decision-making, leadership development, and long-term growth.

This week on Design Development, Brooks joins Rens to share how Newman evolved from a founder-led practice into an organization shaped by defined responsibilities, delegated authority, and shared strategic direction.

That evolution includes quarterly leadership accountability, proactive staffing, and financial metrics designed to balance profitability, workload, and team well-being. Brooks explains why Newman gives emerging leaders meaningful responsibility early and rewards initiative, ambition, and results rather than relying solely on tenure.

Looking ahead, Newman is creating opportunities for its next generation of leaders while pursuing selective acquisitions to expand its expertise, strengthen its market position, and support continued growth. Both efforts reflect a firm building thoughtfully on more than six decades of success—honoring the foundation behind its reputation while developing the structure, leadership, and capabilities required for what comes next.

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Barriers to affordable housing often look procedural: tackling zoning, securing funding, and facing opposition.

Andrew DeFranza believes the affordability crisis sits much deeper. It begins with who communities think should be allowed to live there.

This week on Design Development, Andrew joins Rens to discuss how Harborlight Homes treats housing as more than a physical building. The nonprofit develops and operates affordable communities across the North Shore, then connects residents with services tailored to their needs - from seniors and families to formerly homeless individuals, people with disabilities, and young adults aging out of foster care.

Andrew’s conviction comes from years spent working directly with people facing housing instability. He began his career working in homeless shelters and direct-service casework, where he saw firsthand how the lack of stable housing magnifies challenges involving health, education, employment, and long-term security. Those experiences eventually led him from helping individuals one at a time to building organizations capable of supporting entire communities.

Andrew and Rens dive deep into an exploration of the forces limiting housing production across Massachusetts, the history behind exclusionary land-use policies, and why changing the rules may not be enough if the assumptions behind them remain the same.

Today's episode offers a candid look at what affordable housing requires beyond funding and development - and what must change for more people to find a stable place within their community.

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Pattern District is the product of a vision built patiently over decades. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Northland looked beyond its individual Needham Street properties, acquired two neighboring parcels, and ultimately brought 23 acres together under one plan.

This week on Design Development, Northland's Vice President, Development, Santo Dettore joins Rens to trace the 30-year journey from land assembly and entitlement to design and active construction - and explore how Pattern District is poised to reshape the surrounding Newton community.

Urban design, open space, historic preservation, and sustainability have guided the project from its earliest planning stages. Those four pillars now take shape across a 1.1M square-foot, mixed-use neighborhood with 822 apartments, street-front retail, seven parks, and 12 acres of open space connecting Newton Upper Falls, Oak Hill, and Newton Highlands.

Pattern District’s scale is impressive, but just as remarkable is the discipline required to preserve its vision through decades of planning, extensive public process, changing market conditions, and the practical demands of development. Santo offers a rare look at the decisions, trade-offs, and moments of conviction behind one of Greater Boston’s most ambitious mixed-use developments - and what it takes to carry a vision three decades in the making all the way into construction.

We’re saddened by the passing of Robert A. Danziger, one of Northland’s founders. A lifelong Newton resident, Bob was a dedicated philanthropist, community steward, and visionary leader who raised his family in Newton, built deep roots in the community, and helped shape the foundation of Northland and what is now the Pattern District project today. His legacy will continue for generations.

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When Jay Connolly stepped into leadership at Connolly Brothers, he became the fifth generation of his family to carry forward a construction firm founded in 1880. After nearly 150 years in business, the company is still shaped by the same forces behind its longevity: family ownership, trusted relationships, deep-rooted ambition, and a willingness to adapt as the industry evolves while staying focused on consistent, high-quality work.

In this week's conversation, Jay walks Rens through the history of Connolly Brothers, from its early work to its modern portfolio of commercial, industrial, and institutional projects. He discusses leadership succession, navigating the financial crisis and COVID, and why the company's next chapter is not about growth for growth’s sake. For Jay, the priority is consistency: delivering great projects, working with the right clients, and building a firm where people can advance their careers.

Jay also unpacks how Connolly Brothers developed its design-build model and why this delivery method changes accountability. With architecture in-house, his team can move information faster, reduce confusion, manage RFIs more effectively, and maximize alignment across teams. Jay explores the trust required for this model to succeed, highlights the importance of strong subcontractor relationships, and explains why humility is the first quality he looks for when hiring.

Covering succession, family business, leadership, hiring, collaboration, and technology, today’s episode offers a practical look at what it takes to lead a construction company built to last.

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Can strict technical requirements and elegant design coexist? Jay Siebenmorgen says yes. As Design Partner at NBBJ, Jay has spent over 30 years working on hospitals, research labs, and higher education buildings — some of the most technically demanding spaces in architecture — and made beauty a non-negotiable.

Jay walks through the exploratory design process behind 325 Binney Street — Moderna's Kendall Square headquarters — including the massing studies, zoning constraints, and the five-story atrium his team fought to carve into a famously deep floor plate. He also talks through Mass General's new Ragon Building, a 1.4-million-square-foot academic medical center more than a decade in the making, and the McLean Hospital project that proves great design doesn't require a big budget — just discipline.

Along the way, Jay gets into what makes institutional design different: buildings that have to function under enormous technical and regulatory pressure while still feeling humane, beautiful, and calming to the people inside them. He also opens up about teaching graduate design studios for over a decade, what mentorship has taught him about running a 650-person firm, and the leap — three years ago — from top designer to partner, and everything that leap forced him to learn that architecture school never did.

Thank you for joining the Design Development community. Subscribe to capture insight from the latest episodes dropping every Wednesday.

Our goal is to help people like you identify opportunities for growth by sharing the journey of industry leaders. There is no one path. Success isn't a straight line. There is something to learn from everyone's story. Let's go!

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When James von Klemperer joined Kohn Pedersen Fox, the firm was still early in its story: growing quickly, defining its culture, and creating real opportunity for young architects. Today, the firm has reached 50 years in business, with hundreds of employees across nine global offices, and James has helped carry forward a culture built around authorship, opportunity, and the belief that great architecture is never the work of a single voice.

In this week's conversation, James walks Rens through the moments shaping KPF’s legacy, from its early founders to its expansion into London and Asia, where the firm has designed across some of the world’s densest and most complex cities. He explains how KPF’s work is rooted in connection: between buildings and streets, towers and transit, public space and private development, and architecture and the larger life of the community. This ideology runs through projects like One Vanderbilt in New York, Lotte World Tower in Seoul, Waterline in Austin, and Changi Airport's Terminal 5 in Singapore.

James also shares what it takes to lead a global architecture firm without stepping away from design itself. KPF’s culture, as he describes it, is still shaped by architects who design, lead, teach, debate, and stay close to the forces changing cities around the world. From succession and authorship to AI, agility, public-private partnerships, and the future of urban density, today's episode offers a rare look inside of architecture’s most influential visionaries.

Thank you for joining the Design Development community. Subscribe to capture insight from the latest episodes dropping every Wednesday.

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Paul Zeckser didn’t follow the traditional path into construction. He’s not an architect, engineer, or contractor – instead, he built a career in tech. But as the Co-Founder and CEO of LightTable, he is solving one of construction’s most expensive problems: helping project teams catch drawing and coordination issues before they become RFIs, change orders, and delays.

LightTable was built around an issue Paul believes is bigger than effort or attention to detail. Project teams are managing hundreds of drawing sheets, thousands of pages of specifications, and countless cross-disciplinary decisions. Even strong, experienced teams can miss technicalities or miscoordinate details. LightTable uses AI to review drawings and specs during pre-construction, identify errors and omissions, and rank the issues most likely to create costly problems once construction begins.

Before LightTable, Paul spent years building products by getting close to the end user. At HomeAdvisor, this meant learning directly from contractors and understanding where software helped, where it failed, and where the pain points were for the customer. LightTable carries this same approach into their technology: listen closely to your customers, understand their workflows, and develop accordingly.

Inside this week’s episode:

• How LightTable is solving pre-construction risk, not just speeding up document review
• What a missed coordination detail on a multifamily project reveals about the true cost of drawing errors
• The nerve-wracking sales process that Paul says earns clients' trust
• What's next after LightTable’s $22M Series A as they enter the next stage of AI in construction

Thank you for joining the Design Development community. Subscribe to capture insight from the latest episodes dropping every Wednesday.

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Four years into his architecture career, Stefano Basso returned to school for a Master's in Construction Management.

Not to change professions.

To better understand how contractors think, what they need from architects, and where friction between the two begins.

This decision reflects how Stefano has approached much of his work at SV Design: with curiosity about the full project process, not just the architect's role. Today, he is a Principal and Partner, leading the firm's commercial and multifamily practice with a strong focus on affordable housing.

Stefano has spent nearly his entire career at SV Design, growing with the firm from Intern to Principal. He began in single-family residential design, where his work required close client communication, careful detailing, and an understanding of how design decisions shape the way people live.

As the firm expanded, Stefano moved into commercial, mixed-use, and multifamily design, where tighter budgets, first-time clients, and a wider variety of project types sharpened his communication skills and exposed him to the competing priorities behind every development. Today, Stefano applies his construction-informed perspective to projects across Massachusetts, from affordable and mixed-use housing to shelters, supportive housing, and other mission-driven work.

Inside this week's episode:

• Massachusetts's housing shortage, why Stefano traces it to zoning, and what rent control does to the development pipeline
• What SV Design's affordable housing portfolio looks like, and why the timelines that come with it are rarely short
• What Stefano took from his Master's in Construction Management, and the significance of a course in negotiation
• What it means to become a Partner, and how SV Design's ownership is structured today
• How AI is already shifting the architectural environment, and what's still waiting to change

Thank you for joining the Design Development community. Subscribe to capture insight from the latest episodes dropping every Wednesday.

Our goal is to help people like you identify opportunities for growth by sharing the journey of industry leaders. There is no one path. Success isn't a straight line. There is something to learn from everyone's story. Let's go!

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NEW: More from me on Substack

It's Structural: Get my take on the latest news, trends, and policies shaping commercial real estate.

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