TRXL

Hosted by Evan Troxel

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248

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Aug 2026

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About the show

TRXL is the definitive podcast on technology and the architecture and engineering professions — and the longest-running. 200+ episodes. Five years. Conversations with the founders, researchers, designers, and firm leaders who are actually shaping how architecture gets practiced. Hosted by Evan Troxel, a licensed architect with over 25 years in AEC, TRXL is built for architects, BIM managers, design technologists, computational designers, and firm leaders who want to stay ahead of where the profession is going — not catch up after it's already moved. Topics include artificial intelligence in architecture, BIM, digital practice, firm culture, design tools and workflows, project delivery, sustainability, and the organizational transformation that follows when the technology your firm depends on keeps changing. Each episode is a long-form, unscripted conversation with guests who are doing the work — not narrating it from the sidelines. Guests have included firm principals, CTOs and CIOs, software founders, researchers, and practitioners from leading firms and institutions worldwide. Ranked in the top 3% of all podcasts globally.

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60 recent

September 3, 20261 hr 59 min

240: I've Got to Get My Project Out on Friday

Two questions close out the BIM 2.0 arc. When a tool generates a design for you, where does its output stop and your judgment start? And what does interoperability actually deliver once you strip away the vendor promises? Roderick Bates at Chaos draws the clearest line anybody in this series draws about what a generative tool should not be allowed to do — his team won’t let AI touch geometry or materials without the designer’s direct input, because that’s “the bridge too far.” Campbell Yule pushes back on the whole premise of AI-assisted design: a model that satisfies every constraint is a starting point, not architecture. Jesper Wallgren at Finch says the architect’s role is shifting from craftsman to curator, and that quality — not quantity — becomes the competitive edge once AI can produce endless options. Gavin Nicholls walks through the build-versus-buy calculus at his firm and lands on an analogy that sticks: even Excel is lock-in, we just don’t think about it that way. Then the episode turns to interoperability, and Dimitrie Stefanescu at Speckle gives me the line I’d put on the poster for this whole arc: let’s liberate our data. He and Marty Rozmanith at Skema both argue the old goal — perfect file translation between platforms — was never the real point. Carl Christensen at Autodesk has to answer for what actually survives the trip between Forma and Revit, and Holger Kreienbrink at Graphisoft previews an open collaboration platform meant to make that handoff invisible. Randall Stevens closes the loop on where AI-generated imagery is heading, and Clifton Harness at TestFit makes the case for a constellation of people over any single tool. Three episodes, and the people in them agreed on almost nothing except that the tools are changing faster than the contracts are. This one is for anyone who has ever had to ship a project on a deadline that didn’t move while the tools underneath them did. Get all the show notes, links, and enter to win a pair of Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, courtesy of series partner Graitec, at trxl.co/240 ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

August 27, 20263 hr 7 min

239: You're Not Going Home Early

Episode one ended with the pitch: new tools give architects their day back. Episode two asks the harder question. If a firm stops running one platform and starts running ten, what happens to twenty years of muscle memory while that shakes out? I put some version of that question to nine voices building and using the BIM 2.0 stack. Gavin Nicholls calls the sunk cost a serious blocker and describes his own Revit add-in work as "polishing the prison bars from the other side." Carl Christensen at Autodesk has to answer for why the company that built the industry's center of gravity is choosing to hold customers' hands through the transition instead of moving faster. Matt Wash and Ariel Cooke-Zamora at Bimbeats bring real adoption data — a firm's AutoCAD-to-Civil 3D migration climbed from thirty to seventy percent, then flatlined, and the people who were going to switch already have. Campbell Yule lays out the Catch-22 underneath the whole BIM 2.0 pitch: a new tool only earns the years of trust Revit already has by getting used inside Revit first, not by replacing it. Clifton Harness at TestFit calls Revit "a masterpiece" and then argues that's exactly the problem — it's a parametric propagation engine, not a design tool, and adoption "costs everything" because firms almost never budget for retraining. And Randall Stevens, Jesper Wallgren, Holger Kreienbrink, Marty Rozmanith and Dimitrie Stefanescu all answer from inside the products they're building, sometimes conceding more than a pitch deck would allow. This one is for BIM managers, firm leaders and anyone who has to defend a software line item — the people who feel the switching cost in their calendar, not just their budget. Get all the show notes, links, and enter to win a pair of Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, courtesy of series partner Graitec, at trxl.co/239 ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

August 20, 20261 hr 38 min

238: Half Your Day Isn't Design

The first episode of The Next AEC Tech Stack opens on the number nobody wants to say out loud. Randall Stevens of AVAIL puts the mundane overhead of an architect's day at somewhere near fifty percent, and he admits it's hard to measure because it disappears in seconds and minutes at a time. Looking for a file. Marking up the same PDF three people already marked up. Waiting on a license. Across this episode I put one question to ten people building and using the BIM 2.0 tools: does this let architects design, or does it move the technology tax to a different line item? Matt Wash and Ariel Cooke-Zamora bring project data showing where a documentation crunch actually went. Campbell Yule argues the real progress is much narrower than the marketing suggests. Jesper Wallgren, Holger Kreienbrink, Marty Rozmanith, Dimitrie Stefanescu and Clifton Harness answer from inside the products, sometimes conceding more than you'd expect, and Gavin Nicholls prices out what adoption actually costs a firm with a fixed tech budget. It closes with everyone answering the same three questions about the firm of 2030. This one is for practitioners, BIM managers and firm leaders who have watched a new tool arrive and quietly add work. Get all the show notes, links, and enter to win a pair of Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, courtesy of series partner Graitec, at trxl.co/238 ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

August 14, 20261 hr 27 min

237: 'The Interns Will Have Interns', with Phil Read

Phil Read joins the podcast to talk about where human judgment belongs in an AI-assisted design process. We explore his case for the infamous sawtooth diagram (the thing BIM was supposed to eliminate) as the place where experience gets injected. We get into AI as an intern rather than an oracle, why firms are using it to study materials and lighting instead of generating building form, and why automated documentation is fast but not yet predictable. We close on AEC Acoustics, the 50-person event Phil runs in North Florida, and why it's built the way it is. This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders, technology directors, and educators watching entry-level work get absorbed by software. If the reps were how people used to build judgment, the open question is what replaces them, and Phil makes the case that the answer is teaching delegation far earlier than anyone teaches it now. To learn more about Phil Read, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/237 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors: AVAIL AVAIL's content management system (CMS) simplifies access to your firm's content in one easy-to-use platform. Search and access files from anywhere, create standards-compliant models, streamline documentation, and onboard new hires faster. Try AVAIL for free and request a demo at https://getavail.com Confluence Events & Podcast Join AEC industry technology leaders at Confluence, a series of in-person events and a podcast fostering conversations between firms and tech companies to support innovation. Learn more, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes at https://confluence.getavail.com TRXL+ Membership This episode of TRXL is brought to you by TRXL+ members! Join our community of supporters to get exclusive benefits like ad-free episodes and full access to our AEC Leadership Edge newsletter. Your support keeps these valuable conversations going. Learn more at https://www.trxl.co/#/portal/signup/ ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

August 11, 20261 hr 22 min

236: 'No One Can Own the Law', with Garrett Reynolds

Garrett Reynolds joins the podcast to talk about UpCodes' decade-long fight to keep building codes free and public. We explore the string of lawsuits UpCodes has faced from the International Code Council, ASTM, and other code publishers since 2017, the Supreme Court and circuit court rulings that established no one can own the law, and the Pro Codes Act, the industry-backed legislation now trying to accomplish in Congress what the publishers couldn't win in court. This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders and practitioners who rely on adopted codes every day and have never thought much about who controls access to them. Garrett lays out what's actually at stake for firms and their tech stacks if the publishers win, and what a small amount of constituent pressure can do against a well-funded lobbying effort. To learn more about Garrett Reynolds, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/236 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors: AVAIL AVAIL's content management system (CMS) simplifies access to your firm's content in one easy-to-use platform. Search and access files from anywhere, create standards-compliant models, streamline documentation, and onboard new hires faster. Try AVAIL for free and request a demo at https://getavail.com Confluence Events & Podcast Join us for season 2 of the Confluence podcast where AEC industry software developers take us behind the scenes to show how they make the tools we use use to design the built environment. Find it on YouTube and Spotify. Learn more at https://confluence.getavail.com/podcast TRXL+ Membership This episode of TRXL is brought to you by TRXL+ members! Join our community of supporters to get exclusive benefits like ad-free episodes and full access to our AEC Leadership Edge newsletter. Your support keeps these valuable conversations going. Learn more at https://www.trxl.co/#/portal/signup/ ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

July 28, 20261 hr 19 min

235: 'How Olson Kundig Scaled AI Adoption Across a 300-Person Firm', with Marlene Chen and Blair Payson

Marlene Chen and Blair Payson join the podcast to talk about how a firm known for design, not technology, actually puts new tools to work. We explore the office-wide crit they ran to surface friction points across every role and experience level, the shift that took their visualization team from three people to effectively 150, and the messy reality of adoption: rogue folders on personal desktops, a surprise surge in software licenses, and the slow work of change management inside a 300-person practice. This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders, design technologists, and anyone responsible for getting a growing practice to adopt new tools without flattening its culture. If you've ever wondered how a studio this size balances experimentation against deadlines, and why the people always matter more than the technology, this one will give you plenty to sit with. To learn more about Marlene Chen and Blair Payson, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/235 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors: Part3 Part3 is a modern construction administration platform built for architects. Whether your firm runs CA on Procore or email and spreadsheets, Part3 automates submittals and RFIs, delivers field reports from the job site, and protects every decision with a full audit trail. Book a demo at https://part3.io AVAIL AVAIL's content management system (CMS) simplifies access to your firm's content in one easy-to-use platform. Search and access files from anywhere, create standards-compliant models, streamline documentation, and onboard new hires faster. Try AVAIL for free and request a demo at https://getavail.com Confluence Events & Podcast Join AEC industry technology leaders at Confluence, a series of in-person events and a podcast fostering conversations between firms and tech companies to support innovation. Learn more, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes at https://confluence.getavail.com ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

July 14, 20261 hr 38 min

234: 'Here's to the Crazy Ones, AEC Edition', with Håvard Vasshaug

Håvard Vasshaug joins the podcast to talk about what happens to building data after the architect hits save, and why so much of it dies inside the authoring tool. We explore why it makes no sense to force construction, cost, and scheduling data into Revit, how live model changes can flow straight to contractors and owners without a BIM license, and why six-week-old information is the reason projects run over time and over budget. Håvard also gets into architects' instinct to guard their files, the industry's decades-long habit of shedding risk instead of getting paid to carry it, and why the firms that self-disrupt end up looking light years ahead. This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders, BIM managers, and design technologists who are tired of being the bottleneck stuffing metadata into models on someone else's behalf, and who suspect that structured, liberated data is the real groundwork for everything AI is about to ask of the profession. To learn more about Håvard Vasshaug, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/234 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors: Part3 Part3 is a modern construction administration platform built for architects. Whether your firm runs CA on Procore or email and spreadsheets, Part3 automates submittals and RFIs, delivers field reports from the job site, and protects every decision with a full audit trail. Book a demo at https://part3.io AVAIL AVAIL's content management system (CMS) simplifies access to your firm's content in one easy-to-use platform. Search and access files from anywhere, create standards-compliant models, streamline documentation, and onboard new hires faster. Try AVAIL for free and request a demo at https://getavail.com Confluence Events & Podcast Join AEC industry technology leaders at Confluence, a series of in-person events and a podcast fostering conversations between firms and tech companies to support innovation. Learn more, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes at https://confluence.getavail.com ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

July 1, 20261 hr 32 min

233: 'Spaces For People To Kiss', with Mariusz Hermansdorfer

Mariusz Hermansdorfer joins the podcast to talk about turning an internal tool into a product for the whole profession. We explore how he spun Jifto out of Henning Larsen as the firm's first ever tech spin-off, why letting go of corporate control was the thing that made it possible, and how a Rhino plugin can put wind, stormwater, and microclimate analysis in the hands of architects who never had a specialist team to call. This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders and computational designers who are sitting on tools they've built in-house and wondering whether they could, or should, take them to market. If you've ever felt the gap between how designers think and how engineers deliver, or wondered what it really takes to spin a product out of a practice, this one's for you. To learn more about Mariusz Hermansdorfer, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/233 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors: Part3 Part3 is a modern construction administration platform built for architects. Whether your firm runs CA on Procore or email and spreadsheets, Part3 automates submittals and RFIs, delivers field reports from the job site, and protects every decision with a full audit trail. Book a demo at https://part3.io AVAIL AVAIL's content management system (CMS) simplifies access to your firm's content in one easy-to-use platform. Search and access files from anywhere, create standards-compliant models, streamline documentation, and onboard new hires faster. Try AVAIL for free and request a demo at https://getavail.com Confluence Events & Podcast Join AEC industry technology leaders at Confluence, a series of in-person events and a podcast fostering conversations between firms and tech companies to support innovation. Learn more, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes at https://confluence.getavail.com ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

June 16, 20262 hr 0 min

232: 'Bringing Joy Back to Architecture', with Tatjana Dzambazova

Tatjana Dzambazova joins the podcast to talk about why the AEC industry deserves a brand new tool, one built for AI from the ground up instead of bolted onto software designed 25 years ago. We explore the end of what she calls the terror of technological expertise, the difference between hoarding artifacts and capturing the process behind a building, and why she believes AI could bring joy back to architecture rather than grinding it down to cost and speed. This episode is especially relevant for architects and firm leaders who feel the pull between efficiency and meaning, and who are wrestling with what their value will be in a world where anyone can generate a rendering. Tanja makes the case that if architects don't define what they'll be paid for in the future, owners will define it for them, and she offers a far more hopeful read of this moment than most. To learn more about Tatjana Dzambazova, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/232 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors: Part3 Part3 is a modern construction administration platform built for architects. Whether your firm runs CA on Procore or email and spreadsheets, Part3 automates submittals and RFIs, delivers field reports from the job site, and protects every decision with a full audit trail. Book a demo at https://part3.io AVAIL AVAIL's content management system (CMS) simplifies access to your firm's content in one easy-to-use platform. Search and access files from anywhere, create standards-compliant models, streamline documentation, and onboard new hires faster. Try AVAIL for free and request a demo at https://getavail.com Confluence Events & Podcast Join AEC industry technology leaders at Confluence, a series of in-person events and a podcast fostering conversations between firms and tech companies to support innovation. Learn more, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes at https://confluence.getavail.com ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL

June 9, 20261 hr 7 min

231: 'Architects: Reclaim Control in CA', with Jack Sadler

In this special partner episode, Jack Sadler joins the podcast to talk about the phase of a project where architects quietly lose control: construction administration. We explore why CA became a cost center instead of a profit center, what happens when architects run their work out of someone else's software, and how AI can automate the routing, logging, and paperwork without ever touching the professional judgment that actually matters. Jack makes the case that CA is where design intent gets realized or negotiated away, and that owning the flow of information is how you make sure it's the former. This episode is especially relevant for firm leaders, project architects, and anyone who's been handed the CA phase and felt it turn into email triage, spreadsheet chasing, and cover-your-ass paperwork. If you've ever suspected there's a better way to run construction administration, one that makes your firm smarter, more defensible, and maybe even profitable, this conversation will give you a concrete place to start: take back control of what you're already accountable for. To learn more about Jack Sadler, see the full show notes with links at https://trxl.co/231 To get more great conversations with AEC technology leaders on the TRXL podcast please visit https://trxl.co _____ Episode Sponsors Part3 Part3 is a modern construction administration platform built for architects. Whether your firm runs CA on Procore or email and spreadsheets, Part3 automates submittals and RFIs, delivers field reports from the job site, and protects every decision with a full audit trail. Book a demo at https://part3.io ----- Sign up to become a TRXL member . Free members get email notifications when new episodes are released and when new posts are published on TRXL.co Paid supporters of TRXL+ get ad-free podcast episodes, full show notes, and exclusive Leadership Edge email newsletters from TRXL