Micah Springut: Revolutionizing Architecture with AI & Robotic Stone Carving

Austin

Oh, Micah, thank you for coming on the podcast. I've been excited to talk to you about this.

Micah

Awesome, thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to it.

Austin

Cool. So to start off, can you start off by just telling everyone what is Monumental Labs? What are you up to? And, you know, kind of when did you start and where are you at now?

Micah

Uh, sure. Um, monumental labs is basically it's almost a year old company at this point. Uh, we're building robotic stone carving factories. The goal of which is to unleash a Renaissance in art and architecture and aesthetics. Uh, and later to build buildings out of, of masonry of mass, uh, mass masonry. Um, we're starting by, with a few robots, uh, in the New York area, uh, doing work for architects, for artists. for individuals commissioning large sculptures and small sculptures. We're getting our start doing all of this fine detail work with these seven axis CNC robots. And we're working on building out more automation, more AI into the process to make this process even more efficient so that in the future we'll be building cities that are highly ornamented, extremely ornate if we want them to be, and eventually built out of stone themselves. And it's just the beginning of that process. And I envision next several decades, us scaling up what we can do with the number of robots we have, with the types of robots we have, and with the automation that we're building into them.

Austin

Man, that's cool. So it sounds like you already have several robots because when I first talked to you, I don't know, well, a couple of years ago and then a year ago, you bought your first one. So you've got multiple now.

Micah

We got our first one in June. Our second one came last month and is just getting up and running now. We've basically filled up the space we currently have. We're working inside this stone fabrication facility that's been around since 1927. But we've kind of filled up everything with studio and robot space and office space. And so we actually now need a much bigger place to hopefully house 5 to 10 robots and a whole bunch of wire.

Austin

Wow.

Micah

wire saws and other types of saws to really do this on a much bigger scale.

Austin

Wow, very cool. So I want to, I actually want to dive in a little bit of technical stuff and ask some technical questions about this and then kind of want to get to some of the philosophical things and implications. Um, but, uh, you know, when it comes to robotics, um, and you know, this is one of the things that I, I understand, you know, what a robot does generally speaking, uh, with, with the stone cutting, um, and we'll put some pictures and video for people watching so they can actually see it. Um, but how does AI. come into that. Like how does someone communicate to you what they're trying to do? What do they hand over to you that you're able to turn into a carving?

Micah

So we're currently using a pretty old technology, CNC technology. These are robots that understand the XYZ plane. You feed them a digital file, and it uses these diamond tipped bits that just rotate at 6 ,000 or 7 ,000 revolutions per minute. And it mills away the stone. It's not lasers. It's not water jets. It's good old diamond tip bits. Um, and we take that digital file, we get it perfect. We, we are forming it inside our digital software, whether that's ZBrush or, um, or Rhino or what have you. Uh, and then we're giving it to the machine and then we're programming it. We're pro we're telling it, how do we attack this piece of stone? What size tools, uh, what are our strategies for what angles we go in? Um, what are the, the, the steps and the depths in which we're milling? And we do all that all very much manually today. It's not something new and it's still very, very labor intensive. But the technology has been getting better and better to the point that we can buy robot arms off the shelf, do them up a bit, get some software on there, have the right end effectors, have the right electrospindle geared towards stone and make these carve and be very efficient at carving. The next step and where it gets really interesting is when you start to automate this process. Automation both on the toolpaths. So we don't have to tell the robot, hey, you need to take an eight millimeter bit and go over this with this amount of spacing. It can just learn from what we've done in the past and what our intention is and automate these tool paths. And beyond that, it's attaching sensors to these robots so they can see what's in front of them, understand the world in front of them, and then start to work strategies and understand what's happening. And so take more efficient paths. For example, instead of having to use a tool that slowly spins and goes along a surface, you could actually pick up a chisel and have that robot chisel it away. Because chiseling is actually more efficient. You can remove whole chunks of stone a lot quicker if you have the right tool. So once we get into that domain of robots that understand the world, it's going to be even way cheaper than we're doing now. And we've already gotten it at least on par with sculpture being made pre -war and probably half as cheap already.

Micah

of what people are doing in 1920, 1910.

Austin

That's incredible. What's kind of, do you know, and it might depend on what you're doing, but kind of the division between materials and labor. Cause as you're saying, it's still pretty labor intensive, but you know, when you're buying natural stone, you know, marble or something that could be expensive too. So what's kind of that breakup? Cause I'm curious what, as you get labor costs down, what does that do to overall price?

Micah

Yeah.

Micah

Oh, overall, the cost of the robots themselves, the cost of the stone, the cost to run the water and the electricity are minimal compared to the labor costs. Everything is labor costs. You, we don't have to touch the efficiency of the robots or get the robots themselves cheaper. Uh, we need to make the machines smarter so that they can replace some of the rote tasks that humans do. That's not designing the pieces, but that is deciding.

Austin

Wow.

Micah

How do we mill these pieces efficiently without you having to sit there, wait for it to calculate, press another button, load another tool, et cetera?

Austin

Man. So, so what type and it might be a wide range and you could talk about that range of like what type of things are people ordering? Are they ordering cornices or are they ordering fountains and multiple pieces or one piece or statues? You know, what are, what are people ordering and what are you guys capable of doing?

Micah

Um, yeah, we're our, our business, uh, basically has three or four different components right now. Uh, probably the biggest right now is artists, established artists who either they work in stone, but don't have time to carve things by hand, or they've never worked in stone before, but they are. They're sculptors who've worked in bronze or plaster or clay, um, or terracotta and want to be doing stone or they are completely new to doing things in 3d. And now they can do stuff. Uh, the next is we also do, um, wealthy individuals come to us and say, Hey, I've got this magnificent mansion. It needs, needs some sculpture in it. Um, and we design it sometimes we'll farm it out to an artist that they like, but oftentimes we'll design it in house and, and, and do one -off commissions that way. Uh, and then we do restoration. We've done, uh, restoration for the palace hotel here in New York, the Villard houses. Uh, that one's you can, you can see on our, on our social media pages. We've got a couple big ones coming up. I can't say them yet, but historical big time New York City landmarks that are getting refreshed or their pediments or something broke or was worn off and we're creating it anew. And we also have new builds. For example, we're one of the coolest projects we're working with, Robert Amsturn Architects on design for a new residential college at the University of Michigan, going on that building and dining hall and going on that building, there's a tower and we're putting six statues slash gargoyles, whatever you want to call them, all made out of Wolverines. And so we've got these very interesting designs for those, which we'll release soon and you'll start to be able to see those pictures.

Austin

Wow. What are, are there specific limitations with the robots right now that might change in the future? Or maybe they're just kind of inherent. They'll kind of be there at least for the foreseeable future. And I remember when we were first talking, it was, Hey, this, the robot could get it to a certain point. And then you kind of hand it over to people to do some of the finer in detail to smooth out whatever, like what's kind of that difference there. And do you see that changing over the next five, 10 years?

Micah

Yeah, I mean, in a way, the limitation of all these CNC machines is that because they don't understand what's in front of them, they have no sensors, no video to see what's happening. They're dependent on being perfectly calibrated at every step. And that never really happens. You always get some sort of miscalibration. You get misregistration. So you'll have a surface that's different, it's not quite at the same level as another surface. And you'll see these lines, and they don't polish anything. So it looks a little janky when it comes off the mill. It's not a finished piece by any means, at least in marble. And so then that's where hand carvers come in, and they're using rafts, and they're using chisels, and they're using sandpaper, and they're using dremel tools, and all sorts of interesting power tools and non -power tools to get that surface finished. to go into crevices and get some of the material out that the robot can't reach. I will say that does get easier when you're working in stones like limestone, where you don't see the surface level as deeply, or it's a little softer. Or when you're doing very broad planes like you do for architectural sculpture. So fine art, you absolutely, absolutely need to spend time and money on hand carving. In architecture, you can dial that way back, especially if it's going up high in a building. But that's going to be there even when we have sensors, it's not going to be perfect and you're going to want to have a little hand carving on it. I think we've stopped caring as much about getting a perfect finish on things because there are so many talented hand carvers that can help finish it for us. At some point there'll be a bottleneck, but right now we're taking amazing art students who have been working in clay and 3D and sometimes have been working in stone prior to working with us.

Austin

Right.

Micah

and turning them into hand finishers and hand carvers. And that pipeline is, there's so much talent there that it's not the most necessary thing that we work on that aspect of things. I'll talk about what we might be working on in the future. I think it's more, you know, being able to cut massive blocks of stone into, you know, large cornices without having to have a human operator measure it eight times and line it up and make sure the laser is going on in an eyeball. I think it's more important that we can. Build buildings out of stone again, then get fine art to a level that doesn't require a human.

Austin

Right. And this is really interesting because it's, you know, we talk a lot about building culture, about blending the best of old and new, but it's not just about being nostalgic or being a Luddite or something, you know, and just copying. We don't build like the Romans built because, you know, we live in a different world and we have different technologies. We don't build like we did 500 years ago because we've got new things, but at the same time, not assuming that everything new is better, because that's also part of the problem where it's just, Hey, everything, you know, Everything new is better. Technology is the savior of all. And so we always talk about blending the best of old and new. And man, I mean, you're really like on the extremes of that doing like traditional architecture and art that hasn't been done or not done at scale in a very long time. And then also like the cutting edge of AI and robots, which is pretty cool. Like, how did you get into this? What inspired you? What made you want to do this? And also what made you think it was going to be a big good business model?

Micah

Um, the, the inspiration is I grew up in New York. I, I admired the craftsmanship you see just walking around most neighborhoods where something is old. And I was, I always wondered, why don't we build like this anymore? Why don't we have these beautiful things that seemingly we know how to do, or we knew how to do, and they just don't appear in our environment anymore. So I, you know, I wondered about this for a long, long time. I didn't. I didn't do much about it. I guess the thing I did about it was not go to architecture school and not become an architect because I saw what buildings I was more likely to build as an architect, as a contemporary architect. And so I avoided it. I worked in tech, I built internet companies, but I always thought about doing something in this space. And around 2018, 2019, I said, I'm going to learn how to carve. I'm going to learn how this works, how to stonework. I started taking classes at the art students league here in New York. Um, and I picked up a hammer and chisel and started carving away faces and bus and, and little demos of, you know, pieces of David's eye and, and bunches of grapes that you might see on the side of a building. And it's so fascinating to be steeped in that old craft. And then you realize, boy, this is never going to make it in a real estate. This is slow. This is. Arduous, uh, you can't pay people, you can't people pay people wages that would make this cost effective, effective enough for even high -end developers to incorporate this in their building. And that's unfortunate, but it's also a good thing that people get paid more nowadays and they don't live in squalor and they, everybody has TV and internet and phones. Um, so you have to find any way. So I, you know, I was in tech, I think, oh, we've got to automate this. There's gotta be a way that this is, this is done. I thought maybe I'd have to build some of this stuff from scratch and take some, you know, robot arms and figure out how to, how to mill. But luckily there is this burgeoning group of, of, uh, artisans and technologists in Italy of all places. But you know, that's where the stone and the marble industry is focused, uh, who are building these robots who have been playing with them. A lot of times they're, they're just little projects that a stone fabricator put together. Um, and I went out there and I started learning from them and seeing.

Micah

what they did to operate, what they could accomplish with a particular robot. And eventually we settled on a company we liked using and started working with them to build our robots and bring them over here to the United States. So we got trained and we became the first company here in the US to get these amazing Italian robots here. And yeah, that's the origin story.

Austin

I love it. I love that you actually went, Hey, going, taking classes, learning how to, you know, just learning the actual medium first and then jumping into the automation. Cause you actually understand the fundamentals, you know, before figuring out how to automate it.

Micah

And then you get new fundamentals, right? Like you can do new things with the robot that you can't really do with a chisel. There's certain places you can't reach with a chisel, but you can put like a 500 millimeter long tool, whole tool cone, like directly behind a statue and get parts and do intricate work at a depth that you would never be able to do by hand. So there's, there's ways you can do things and new ways you can exploit these robots to new types of art.

Austin

Right.

Micah

you can make things more complicated. What looks complicated to the human eye does not look complicated to the robot. So you can do certain things that you wouldn't even dare do by hand because it's just too much work. You can make things bigger. At scale, there's just so much labor to remove the material for an eight foot tall sculpture that would take you years to do. And it takes us like 11, 12 days.

Austin

Gosh.

Micah

So you can dream bigger. Artists aren't limited to building something this size. They can build something that's 10 feet tall, 12 feet tall, and make it work.

Austin

What's so cool about what you're talking about, cause I want to get into next kind of a little bit of controversy about like people, certain people, you know, just, I don't know, unhappy about this, but like everything you're saying is talking about how essentially it's a tool, just like, you know, a Dremel is a tool or, you know, a, a, a wholesale, whatever that, um, Opens up more human creativity and more artistic ability and opportunity. It's not limiting or not taking away. Um, is that how you perceive it?

Micah

Yeah. I mean, here in New York and the United States in general, stone carving as an art was dead. There was, there was only almost nobody doing it at a scale and selling marble. Everybody was doing bronze. There's still people doing a ton of bronze or the people that go out to Italy and, and, uh, and work there and in the mountains and can churn out some stuff. Uh, and they're still great, great sculptors all over the world. But functionally in the U S it was, it was a dying or dead industry. Um, everything became so expensive artists didn't want to do it. They didn't have time to throw away a year of their life working on a particular sculpture. And they, they're not going to get, you know, 10 X the return on it from doing a bronze or, or doing something in plaster. So they weren't doing it. Uh, and all of a sudden we brought it back and we're working with a dozen or two dozen now artists who are taking their ideas that they've done in 3d and. and putting them into marble. On the building front, this project for Ramza for Robert Amstert Architects, it either would not have been done or would have been done in like, poured like, faux stone, like concrete, and it would have looked not great. It would have looked terrible. And we wouldn't have thought it was that great. And we'd just move on and say, you know, I guess we can't do the things that we used to do anymore. We'd hang our heads and talk about the good old days, but it's not the case. We don't have to do that anymore. Um, if you're worried about the loss of craft, just figure out what the robot can do and add craft back into it. There's, there's so many ways to still have hand carving in there. It's, it's just a matter of scale and, and level of complexity that you can now achieve.

Austin

It's interesting, you know, there's a lot of, not maybe a lot, but people I know, high quality, very talented tradesmen that are in traditional craft and stuff, don't like when people refer to things as dying or a dead trade, which I do as well. I refer to things like, hey, it's a dying trade, it's a dead trade. And they talk about how that's, I don't know, disenfranchising for young people or something. And, um,

Micah

Mm -hmm.

Austin

I don't know. I kind of been with you though, that it's just like, okay, maybe there's 10 people in the US, maybe there's a hundred people in the US kind of doing this, these, you know, stone carving or whatever, or maybe even more. But functionally as a builder and developer myself, I can tell you like, it doesn't like it, okay, maybe a few people know how to do it, but that's not what I mean when I say that is a dying trade. If it's not accessible for people and if it's only accessible for the 0 .0001%, um, then to me it's functionally dead. And so that's what, to me, you're really revitalizing a trade by introducing a new tool that opens up all sorts of possibilities and other kind of controversy, which this one I understand, I don't know, it's interesting controversy, but there's this kind of narrative that being a tradesman is just the most romantic thing that you could possibly do. And I think, There's elements of truth to that. If you're doing like really artistic work and a tradesman and there's so much, you know, honor and hard work and being out there every day. But a lot of this stuff, if, you know, if you're looking at how things were built a long time ago and there's basically an assembly line of really poorly paid people sitting with a chisel all day long, working on the exact same corners over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, like, is that like the most dignified way they can live? And I'm not saying it's not dignified. I'm just saying. introducing a robot. I'm not sure it's actually, actually all that dehumanizing. I don't know. What's your take on that? I know it's, you your company and you're doing this, but I'm just curious what you think about that.

Micah

I mean, so, so first off, the people who have these criticisms are basically, I look at their work and it's like, I have so much respect for them. Like they, they're like the heroes of keeping the knowledge alive and what they want for the environment and what they want it to look like is often exactly what I want, which is put the human hand back into the built environment. I am tired of a flat plane. I'm tired of things that look like they came off a machine. And we're just there because the efficiency of the machine is do a right angle and put a straight line. And a clean line is just a machine aesthetic. And so I'm with them on that. Where we disagree is the way to get that to continue insisting that we don't use technology to the point that you become irrelevant to new buildings. You're not going to be irrelevant to historic restoration because When they tell you to restore a building to its historic state, you do it and you pay whatever it takes and you have to. And that's where these people make their living. But beyond that, nobody is thinking, oh, I'm going to make a new building out of stone today. And that's the problem. That's why it's dead is because there's nothing new coming out of it and nobody can afford to think of it as something fresh and new that they can do and add to the the pantheon of great buildings. And so if we face, let's face facts about what, where we're not seeing a lot of great new stone buildings coming, popping up. We're seeing a lot of glass, maybe some cool things with terracotta skins, maybe some cool tile. Uh, if we're lucky. Um, but you're that's no, no. If you want to have a, if you want to see more beautiful buildings, you have to embrace technology and you're going to have to embrace a lot of AI. You're going to have to take.

Austin

But that's not the majority, that's sub 10 % maybe of new construction.

Micah

automation and treat it seriously and figure out where humans can direct the machines to do beautiful things. Um, but we, you know, it's so weird because we have four or five, now five hand carvers, um, at our facility working nonstop to get things out and they're, they're back. Like we need to hire more and more people. Uh, there's no shortage of handwork. Once we started. made it possible for people to create things again. And then there's on the digital side, are you going to make fun of the artists who are crafting and sculpting things in a digital program, sometimes in virtual reality? And then they go out onto the floor and they carve it when they see it with their own eyes. And there's this constant interplay between the digital model and the physical model. These are artists. This is a new medium. It's not necessarily the same medium they grew up in. But it's real.

Austin

Yeah, you know, and, and another thing I hear, and I'm also curious to think about myself is just this idea of authenticity. And we hear that all the time. And there's so many different ways to debate authenticity. And one kind of quick example is I talk a lot about authenticity in our own buildings, but it's kind of a complicated thing. What that actually means. Cause and I'll give you a very simple example is windows back in the old day. Um, they had muttons because you couldn't make pieces of glass very big. So you have the, you know, the dividers in the windows for anyone listening. And because you could have a bunch of small piece of glass that make up the window and you can also replace those things. Well, now we can do large pieces of glass is by far the most cost effective way to do it. And then, so we put that in the window and then the, the, they call it like simulated divided light. The, the muttons are kind of like layered on top kind of thing. And, uh, and so. early on in my career, I was kind of going, wait, when I was really talking like all just hardcore authenticity, if it's not a real beam, it's not a structural beam, I'm not putting it in. And I've really changed my mind on a lot of this stuff because I'm going, well, what's the purpose of that? Should I just do all just no muttons in any of the windows, just giant sheets of glass because it's not quote unquote authentic? And I was like, that's really stupid, Austin. So like, I need to figure out a different definition of what authentic means. Um, but like on that topic, which this is just kind of philosophical,

Micah

Hmm.

Austin

But what is like, how do you think about authenticity and art, you know, and introducing robots and AI and interplay between technology and people. Do you think much about that? Do you have any conversations about that? Are people bringing things up? Like where do you stand on all that? And I say stand, I mean, I don't mean a hard stance.

Micah

Yeah. Yeah. It's a big, I mean, it's a big question mark for a lot of some of the artists we work with. Like to pretend that it's all done by hand. That's what their market or they think their buyer wants. And then we have artists who go all in on this is what the machine can do. And this is what we can create with machines. Um, it tends to divide by age group. Um, all the younger artists are. and even some of the older artists who are now experimenting in a new medium, they're giddy with excitement about what can we do with this robot that's different? How do we utilize it in a way that's different? What does it mean when we're playing with things digitally and not just working with the stone directly? It's not a settled debate what that is. And I think you're going to see... The quality of the art that's coming out of our studio, and it will be different by every artist, will kind of justify it in the end. You're going to see things that are not out yet we haven't been able to show that are either NDA'd or they're just not released yet and will be released when they're in a gallery or in a museum. And they will look nothing like the sculpture you've seen before. They will look nothing like modernist sculpture. They won't just be like lines and things floating in the air. they'll be, what does 21st century figurative art look like? What does digital art look like when it's cast or created, put into marble? And people are still figuring that out. And I don't think everybody has figured it out yet. And they're still experimenting. But some of the stuff that's coming out is just going to be pretty mind boggling. And if the great masters were alive today, you better believe they'd be experimenting with this stuff and figuring out how to utilize this to the utmost.

Austin

So that's kind of my take too is like the real artists are inventors and innovators and they're going to use whatever is at their handset to create art and new tools, I mean, new possibilities. One of the comments I remember, this was, I don't know, six months back on Twitter or longer, but in one of the little debates and I think people were talking, I think you even asked when people were kind of questioning it and you said, well, what about like, is something... Does its beauty change whether it was like done by a human hand or a robot? Like if you had no idea and you walked up to a piece, is there a different experience? There's something about it that's different.

Micah

Yeah, but think about the divide between the regular art observer and artists themselves. Most sculpture, historically, didn't have the artist's hand in it at all. They hired studio hands, or they hired a third party company like the Pitcherilli brothers here in New York to just use a point system, like an old XYZ plane CNC machine. that you'd line up with the model and then you'd carve it into stone. And was there a difference? Did people say, oh, well, this was done by somebody else? Yeah, probably. There's probably people railing against it back in the time. And we now look at this and we're like, ah, wasn't it so special what they used to do? And there's no awareness of how art is actually created whatsoever. So. When I deal with artists and I talk to artists and we hire artists to come on and be carvers and sculptors with us, there's really little questioning about this.

Austin

Yeah, that's interesting about how people generally have no idea how art is created or a building is created, right? I think about that's kind of where I come back to is could you be enriched by looking at a piece of art by knowing how it was made? Absolutely. Like that's part of like, I think like learning about art or something or learning about music. And then you go listen to music and you're going to have a richer experience because you understand it better. You understand how hard it is to do something. You understand. the process and so there's a greater appreciation. Most people looking at art don't know that, but we can generally still agree on what's beautiful, not always, but most people generally agree on what's beautiful, at least in my experience and statistically, I believe.

Micah

Or like, where do people think bronzes come from? The casting process. Do they think the artist is shaping everything with their hand? Or no, they're going to a fabricator and saying, a bronze caster and saying, here's my model, make the bronze. And maybe they touched at the end and they clean it up. But are we to dismiss all of bronze casting as faux art? Because it's...

Austin

Hot metal.

Austin

Right.

Micah

basically gets made by a fabricator, it makes no sense.

Austin

That's the act of creating and creating beauty and there's different ways to do that. And I think what I do like is there is still such a human element. I mean, I can understand if you start just saying, Hey, there's not even a person involved with this. There's just some robots and AI and they're just turning out stuff and deciding what everyone's going to live in and built and look at. Like, yeah, I would start being like, hold on a second. But when the tool is being used by humans. And ideally, of course, some people are going to create ugly art with that, but you don't have to have a robot or a die to create ugly art. I mean, there's a lot of bad stuff out there that didn't, you know, they did by hand. You know, they did by hand. Yeah.

Micah

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I also think if AI comes up with an amazing 3D model and wows us with it, I have no problem seeing that as art. I have no problem making it. I have no problem with an AI saying, well, look, we've got a $200 ,000 budget to do this apartment building in some sort of stone. Do you want to spend $50 ,000 for an artist to create 80 different models for how we're going to, you know,

Austin

Yeah.

Micah

put these ornament, ornaments on, or we click a button and we get 80 % of the way there and then humans can fix it up and, and turn to something new. I think that'd be absolutely amazing. If it expands the, it expands what we can do with a particular budget, it's going to be really fun to see what level we can get out of AI, but we're not there yet. And, uh, we all know for a long time on the creative front, it's, it's still going to be humans.

Austin

Right. Yeah, I can see like the part that I, I can't, and you're already doing, but you know, I can understand people's hesitation when it's like, let's just hand over everything to robots. And then you kind of, even if there's like some human hands, you know, uh, included in finishing it, but that idea of keeping the craft alive, at least where people understand how it works, just how you started off, not with a robot, you started off by hand and the chisel to understand the basics. And so like, The way I think about it is if you're going through an apprenticeship program to be a stone carver or something, even if you're going to use robots later, just like if you're in architecture school, ideally you'd be learning how to draw by hand, even though we have computers, but just like Notre Dame, they spend four years drawing by hand. They don't touch a computer. I think that's awesome. And then they get into computer afterwards because, but they've learned the basics and whether that's accounting or whatever it is, people actually understand that's the concern I get of all AI is kind of like, okay, if you're going to be an accountant and. I get it. The AI knows a lot, but still you need to understand the back end of it, how things work so that you can problem solve. You can be creative yourself. You can fix things. And if the AI breaks, you know, at least there's still knowledge there. What do you think about that in terms of, um, keeping the kind of knowledge alive of the actual how to and the hand crafting nature of it? Not that it's your job to do that, right? You're not training stonemasons.

Micah

Bye. I know that we, we are, I mean, how many people had had carving jobs in New York city before we came along? Like probably five to 10 people. And now we've added another five and we'll be adding another 15, 20. Um, we're bringing people into the trade. There were no jobs for them. There, there are no, you're not going to graduate from art school and say, I'm going to be a stone carver. Now you actually can. Um, and it's going to get bigger and it's going to be in every, you know, we'll be in multiple cities and.

Austin

So you're actually bringing people into the trade.

Micah

Hopefully we'll have competitors, to be honest, and a lot of people will be doing this and I'll be competing to make great things. Uh, so I mean, all we're doing is scooping up every graduate from like New York Academy of art and Grand Central Atelier and, and all the great art schools in New York city where people wanted to be working in stone. And instead they settled for something else. Uh, and now they get to work in stone again and they can pay the bills with that and they can live in New York city with that and they can. develop their own art on the side, it's bringing it back where we're reviving this craft.

Austin

And it actually lets you do a lot more as an artist, as a stone carver, right? Or something where you can rather than work on one piece for a year or something. And you can actually, and I don't just mean for the sake of production, right? I just mean the actual experience of it. And if you still want to craft by hand, you're welcome to.

Micah

You're welcome. And we still do at certain scales, small scales, like sometimes just faster to craft by hand. I would say that we're probably going to be less skilled at chiseling and doing massive pieces with a point system. We don't need to use a point system. And we're going to be a whole lot better at like the final finishing touches. And we use a lot of really interesting tools, some of that from the glass industry, glassware, from jewelry. We're like putting together very weird polishing. finishing bits and sanders and diamond tip rasps. I have one person in our studio who's made it her mission to figure out every single tool in the market and how they can be used in the most efficient and effective manner. We're playing with waxes and learning again how to finish stone in a beautiful way.

Austin

It's so cool. Like it sounds so creative, uh, you know, and people centric actually, you know, what do you think about? And this is one where I do struggle. I don't know where I land on this one. Um, cause I just haven't debated with enough people. I'd have to like hear other perspectives, but copying great works of art, um, versus, you original piece of art or, or saying copying and not great piece of art. You know what? Like if someone went to you and said, I want to the statue of David exactly. What would you say and how would you think about it?

Micah

Um, yeah, we take commissions for all sorts of things, some of which we agree with, some of which we don't. So yeah, if somebody wants to commission it fine. Now, uh, there is a long history of taking existing pieces of art and, and re -imagining them or doing exact copies. You know, you go to the Uffizi gallery in Florence and you line up, you see, uh, Leocowon, you're like, wow, look at this amazing sculpture. that was copied from a much older version in like 1890 or something like that. And you're like, okay, there's a tradition here. Choose what you want. Like we don't need to copy it, but if you want to and you found something beautiful and you want to make a new copy, like that's great. No, I don't stand in the way. And I think, I think some things you are so beautiful that you want to have a copy and you want to, you know, how many thinkers, how many of Rodin's thinkers are there in the world? How many versions of the same bronze are there in the world? It's really up to you how you want to produce art. No problem with it at all.

Austin

Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's one where I, I'm like, I could see, you know, it's hard because what is a great piece of art? I mean, does, well, most people agree once again, but where's that cutoff? Cause in my head, which I'm not being consistent here. Like I know I'm not consistent about it, but I'm kind of going, Oh yeah. Some of these just like amazing piece of art. If someone wants a replica of it for their private home or whatever. Okay, fine. But like it should be labeled as such or something in my head or, you know, like where it's like, this is not the original. It's a copy.

Micah

Oh yeah, I mean it happens all the time, right? I just saw like at Sotheby's, like a Canova takeoff. It's not going to sell at a million dollars like an original Canova will, but somebody for $30 ,000 or $50 ,000 can have the same piece that's not made by the original master or their original studio. So there's different pieces for different segments. An artist might choose to do one massive, uh, version of their work that they'll sell as a unique copy that nobody else should copy. And it's going to be very expensive. And then they'll make a series of 10. It's the same as having a print. It's different than a painting. Uh, and as long as the artist makes clear, Hey, this is a, this is a series and this is a, there's a set of four of these, uh, it's just allows different price points to get involved in art. Art should not be something that only billionaires and hundred millionaires should afford. It should be able to be purchased by people at all income levels.

Austin

Yeah, I agree with that. You know, what do you think about just architecture and meaning? Like we've kind of already touched on this a little bit, but like what gives architecture meaning and value? Cause I understand why the process is part of that. Um, I think, um, I mean, like if something's very unethically done, right? Like we, we kind of as a society are going to look at that a little bit differently, even if it's a great, like a masterpiece of some kind, but if it was, I don't know, done under horrible conditions or something, or people were grossly mistreated, like society is going to think a little bit differently about it. But in terms of architecture and, and, you know, buildings and most people don't know the stories and don't know how things are getting built. Where is the meaning in it? Do you think like where, especially where I'm kind of bringing it together where. people are worried about losing the meaning by using robots.

Micah

Yeah, we see very little meaningful architecture done today. And it's not because I hate all modern buildings or I hate modernist architecture. It's simply a matter of how much architecture is thoughtful about its viewers and its users and give back to people who are using it. It's not just an economic floor space spreadsheet creation. The reason I think so many people like old architecture versus new architecture is because in many, many instances, most instances, there was a sense of the developer and the architect and the artist giving back through detail and attention to how it would be viewed by others and interest and every time I see that intricate and intricate design, whether it's a piece of repeated terracotta or it's an originally carved piece of stone. It's amazing to me that anybody even thought to do this because today you would never imagine there was ever possible an age where anything but the economic return on that asset was given any thought and everything I rock now I'm on the Upper West Side now and I walk around and everything, everything pre -war expresses some sort of intention to do better. And when modernist architecture does that, in many cases it does. Usually it takes our very large budgets. Usually it's very, very highly skilled, well -known architects. It's amazing too. And it produces an incredible effect as well. But the fact is that 99 .9 % of things that are built today don't show anything. They're the, I guess they're the function of a brand of finance and maybe a culture that doesn't seem to care or says, well, If I do care, I'm not going to get a return on it because everybody else is, is, you know, putting up such junk today. So that's all it is. I think as soon as you recognize that the building had people who cared about you and thought about your experience with it, um, you're in an, you're in new territory.

Austin

I think that's a really nice way to think about it. You mentioned like, I grew up in the suburbs of Houston and kind of quintessential suburban sprawl, just all of it built since the sixties onward and just not much worth celebrating. And then new stuff, there's some amazing areas, but they're the old historic areas. But I remember, Right before going to KPMG, this is 2011, right before going to my accounting job, I just graduated, I made some money at an internship. So I went off and backpacked through Spain and Portugal on my own. And I'd been to Italy for like a couple of weeks in college at one point, which I think that really kind of got my mind going. But it was those three months just backpacking my own through these places and just being, I didn't have the language for architecture. I had no background in art or architecture. Like I wouldn't have known what a hip roof was, right? Or a dormer specifically. Um. but just walk around being, this is incredible. And I didn't have language and I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't know what I was feeling, but just looking back, I think what I was feeling at the time was, golly, I grew up thinking we were at the pinnacle of all of human progress. And I've just been told about how amazing America is, that America is the great experiment, the light of the world. And we are in many, I mean, there's some just unbelievable things about America. But when you go and look at these places that were built 500 years ago, a thousand years ago, 2000 years ago, and of course people spend billions to go there every year just to spend one week in these places, you're going, I mean, it was just like a brain thing that by, it wasn't competing. I was like, how, and of course I knew nothing about real estate. It was like, how does this exist? And we're building that, like I couldn't, and then I went and worked at my accounting job and I only made it a year and three months. Cause like something's off. Like I just. I can't do this anymore. I've got to go figure out what's going on with the world because none of this makes sense to me. Gosh, I forgot where I was kind of going with that. And you also mentioned about the, like, what is it culturally and stuff. Maybe people just don't appreciate this. And I've started thinking about this a lot at building culture. There's a reason we call it building culture, building culture, the construction culture, the culture of construction, the bricks and sticks, and then building culture. And...

Micah

No.

Austin

Originally, I've really been focused on the construction culture, figuring out the bricks and sticks, the R &D, understanding how it works, all of that. And now I'm really shifting into the culture aspect because the bricks and sticks is maybe 50 % of the equation. Because if people, it's not just about like educated, oh, I don't mean, did they go to some university or something? That's not what I mean at all. But if people aren't aware enough,

Micah

Mm -hmm.

Austin

to see beauty and appreciate it if they're so, you know, and which is hard because in American culture and I'm not in New York, you know, New York is so uniquely different than almost anywhere else in the country. But everything is just so like destination driven where it's just like there's this sea of ugliness and then like, let's go to this destination over here to go eat and then let's go to a sea of ugliness forever to go to this destination over here to go to the doctor, to go shop or go to the school, whatever. And this destination over here. And I wonder if it almost kind of like numbs us to actually attention and appreciation because we kind of have to, because driving at 70 miles an hour down a stroad at 30 miles an hour doesn't feel good. So we kind of have to turn off all those senses. And then it's like, gosh, I went to a basketball game a few weeks ago and I don't mean to be disrespectful about it, but it was just like so loud and. Like it's like music. It's like barely a sports game because there's like basketball, but it's like giant music. And then there's a pause and then people run on the thing. And then there's the, the, it's just like, Whoa, like so over -stimulating. Like what happened to just like watching a basketball game? Um, and I don't know. So I think about this with in relation to architecture and people being able to access it, but that really isn't about how the architecture was made or built, whether that was by human hands or by robot hands. It's us, you know? Um,

Micah

So I think you've touched on the big question mark of all of this, which is, is it culture or is it economics? What drove us to abandon a way of building and led to the state of affairs we're in? Behind monumental labs is a hypothesis that at least partially, but probably maybe in a big way, economics is what's the - the cause of the downfall of our built environment. That culture is shaped by what can be done within an economic system. And that hypothesis is that working in the types of things we did pre -war became too expensive as human labor costs rose. And the other question, the other side of that is, well, no, we stopped wearing fedoras. We like started dressing down. I, I don't know how this all ties together. I don't know. what came first, but I think at a very prerequisite for a beautiful building culture is building economics that actually makes sense. And if you're building in a certain way, if you're building in concrete, it becomes a very hard and cost ineffective to tack on a piece of stone that is carved by a human or even by a robot. If you're just having to create an entirely new structure that doesn't make any sense. The counterpoint to this is on the economic side, it's like, oh, Even tenements in New York city got decorated with beautiful cornices and details and, and, um, interesting, you know, window casements and all of that. And is that because we all thought it was undignified to live in a very boring flat faced building and we just, our friends would not accept us if we did anything differently, or was it just cheap enough that you could do it? And the expectation from the public was, Oh, you don't have a cornice. What's wrong with this landlord? Or was it the market for renting out an apartment was so competitive that you had to offer something beyond just floor space? Disaggregating this and figuring out what it is, I don't know if we'll ever find out. But I think that lowering the cost of building in the way we want to build is going to be a prerequisite for doing anything. I think you're probably experiencing this in your business.

Micah

Question I always think about with you is your costs are definitely higher for building in brick. Does the market accept it? And also, for you, does it maybe not matter? And even if you're not making as much money as somebody else, why aren't there more people copying you? Why aren't there more people who are trying to build in structural masonry? So this is a great debate. But at least I have an experiment going that we'll see if it can get results. And you do, too.

Austin

I think that's great. Like you're like, it's right. I don't know if you'll ever get to the answer of what comes first. Cause I think it's both, right? There's self reinforcing and all that, but economics, you, you can't solve it without solving economics. That's for sure. Like, because I talk to developers all the time that want to do something and then they can't because it can't afford it. And of course that's also partially capital markets and how capital works and wants a really quick exit and all that, which is kind of a cultural thing, but also comes from having. Not very sound money, you know? So there's a lot of like things that even go into that. But no, I think that, that lowering the cost will enable things. And that's what I think about, like, you know, you mentioned why do we stop doing it? Because we didn't have the money. And I'm sure that's partially some of the answer, but also, you know, a lot of this kind of happened after World War II and you hear this, you know, people were traumatized after this just unbelievable. this human destruction on a scale we've never seen before, ever. I don't know if you've ever listened to Dan Carlin, but he describes the Genghis Kang and wars back in the day versus World War II. And it was like one day World War II killed more people than all, just while the scale of human destruction and what that probably does to the psyche and all that. And then you definitely see a very much shift after World War II. So there's a cultural component, Um, as well, but, and of course I love Winston Churchill's quote, like first we shape our buildings thereafter, they shape us. And so if you start not being able to afford to do beautiful things, also, there's some cultural things you start putting out uglier things. Then people growing up have never even seen beautiful things like me growing up in the suburbs of Houston. You just think this is normal and it doesn't take very long. It takes a couple of generations. And then suddenly you don't have anyone that remembered what's possible. All you see is what's around you. And as humans, we just. generally, except what's around us is kind of like the reality. And it must be a good reason it's this way. Who am I to question why the world looks the way it is? It's taken me almost 36 years to start seriously being like, what the hell and feeling quite confident in questioning it.

Micah

Yeah.

Micah

But we, you know, we got new materials. We also had way more people joining the middle class who in the past would live in a tiny little apartment and maybe they'd get a detail on, on their exterior that they liked. And, you know, our wealth was increased dramatically when, when, yeah, we built uglier things for a time and we, we house more people in higher quality houses and apartments. Um, so there's, there's something to that, right? It makes me feel better when I think of like the, the sadness of suburbia. It's like. Well, in a certain way, it's better than everybody being crammed into like four families in an apartment on the Lower East Side. Like some level this has to happen and they're going to be places that aren't beautiful. What bothers me is that the places that are wealthy and could afford it and are at the center of the financial world here in New York, choose to make buildings that are ugly. And, and sometimes they can't do any better. Um, but no, it didn't come, it's not a mystery that like modernism like came out of, uh, this trauma, but also it came out of some really interesting intellectual ideas. And man, if you were walking around and a hundred percent of New York City was like little chinsley things and, um, columns everywhere, like printed in mass, like what Mies was doing with the Seagram building was frigging fantastic. And the Leverhouse was fantastic. It like played off of all of this traditional architecture and looks like these alien orbs that have flown in, flown into the city. And they're great. I would love to be able to walk around New York City in 1965. like when there's still so much that's remaining, but also these new glass shimmering towers in the middle of everything. But what happened is, I don't know. I don't know what happened to the degradation of architecture as a craft, but it just became putting up square footage. And perhaps our housing shortage explains it. Like, we don't have the luxury of hoping for something beautiful. We just need enough space to put people. And it's all cyclical. You build ugly things and everybody stops trying to build. Um, and then, and then we're stuck because we become NIMBYs and, and I don't, I don't want to see another ugly building in a historic district. Um, I want to see something that competes with, with something that came before. Yeah. Let's get rid of some like six story, uh, old tenement buildings and put up like a 30 story amazing, uh, uh, condos that have.

Austin

Mm -hmm.

Micah

their own personality. Let's do that, but we have to make it beautiful first.

Austin

I think that's a really great way to think about it. You know, what, what do you see? Um, how do you envision kind of the future of architecture and all that? I mean, kind of even if you're make it even personal with monumental labs of just, you know, kind of the rest of your life, like, what do you kind of see being able to happen your vision for it? And, um,

Micah

I see us returning to our tradition of building in stone. I don't think 30 years from now, you will be putting up a concrete building, concrete and steel building. I think you will actually be putting up stone taken out of the ground. That doesn't have to be manufactured. That has, you know, 96 % less carbon intensive, intensiveness than, than steel and concrete. Um, it's going to be structural stone post tension, a thin steel wire. keeping everything compressed and you're going be building 50 story buildings out of stone again. And that's going to be the default way we build things. And once you do that, you're in the, you're, you're in the material that we can use to decorate things. The pillars and the lentils that we use to build buildings can actually be operated on. And, uh, they'll turn into our new, you know, facing facades of the cathedral with their own pediments and stories written on them because we can. And because we. It's not too much money once you're already building in a stone to just shape that stone. I think the costs will be coming down tremendously. I think AI will help us. Manufacture detail and custom detail with, with barely a blip in the, in the construction budget. And, uh, we can talk about structural stone all day and, and we can talk about how brick fits into that. But, um, I think the long century weight of, of getting away from. natural materials that are there for the taking is coming to an end.

Austin

Man, I really love that vision. And I love that it's bold too, but very possible as we, you know, for everyone listening, steel and concrete buildings, I mean, they can function well long -term, but a lot of reinforced concrete ends up failing fairly quickly because the steel rusts and blows out the concrete. But. And so, you know, the way I talk about in terms of brick, like I've really backed off like, ah, brick has got to, I really care more about masonry based construction systems. That's really what we're at at building culture is masonry based construction systems. Um, and it's not, oh, a triple white wall or blah, blah, blah. It's the reason being is resiliency and points of failure. If you want something to last one, it has to be beautiful. It's got to be useful, but it's also got to be durable. And what is durable? It's there is no perfect building system. Everything has weaknesses. The moment I bring up structural masonry, I cannot believe how many people start being like, but what about seismic and earthquakes? And you're going guys, like everything has weaknesses. I can say, you know, well, wood framed has to fire and water and termites and rot and mold, you know, vulnerabilities. So it's about finding the systems that the fewest vulnerabilities and then controlling for catastrophic failures. And hence the tension ties you just talked about. Um, and then the masonry is just. so much more resilient and can take substantial periods of neglect, which is why I think it can last so long because you're talking about something about not just lasting for a hundred years, but hundreds of years. You're talking about major economic cycles, you know, of, of there could be utter poverty for 150 years. And then for a building to be able to break, be brought back to life, it has to last in dilapidation for a long time. And masonry, while it still needs maintained, it can last a lot longer. Unmaintained than a wood frame. If you don't keep that thing painted well, or if it's a steel and concrete building, if you don't keep all of the water out, it's going to fail.

Micah

Oh yeah. And, uh, you know, the, well, the masonry buildings will also incorporate wood. You're not going to need, you're not going to need a, uh, you know, all of the, um, the floor plates and all the joists, they don't have to be all stone. There's going to be CLT involved, but the main peers that hold up the building, um, and some of the main, uh, lintels will, will be, will be stone. And what's going to be great about it is actually. If you want to knock that building down, you're going to actually take that stone down and just use it somewhere else. There's going to be, there's going to be. Yup. Yup. Uh, they're going to be held together and they're going to be unmoved when you take them apart. Maybe they'll shift in the soil. We'll see. Uh, maybe there's some rot on the inside, but you'll just be able to use that. Those, those stone beams once again.

Austin

Right? Can't do that with still in concrete.

Austin

Man, so last thing I'll tell you, you mentioned floor systems and I was going to say this. I'll send you a link after, but there's a podcast that I'm dropping next week with Philip Block, Block Research Group out of Zurich. Guy met in Spain last summer when I was studying there and they are doing unbelievable things with unreinforced lightweight concrete. They're taking, and here's an example. If you take just a normal floor system in a building, commercial building, you know, where it's steel and concrete. And he was using an example of a 25 story building. Well, now that I'm understanding a little bit more about engineering and stuff, but basically there's just so much waste in the material. And I also didn't realize that, oh gosh, I'm going to get this wrong. I forget what percent of the mass of the building, I think 60 % of the mass of a modern commercial building is in the floor system, which is just. Insane and whether you're talking about the number of concrete trucks the number amount of steel in it and so he's Developed this floor system kind of doing the same thing blending old knowledge, but with new technology And really using graphic statics to shape the geometry of the floor system and basically cutting out all this unnecessary stuff So when you're looking up at the bottom of it kind of looks like a web And then there's actually you know a flat piece on top and the flat piece is one inch That's actually the part you're like standing on Micah (01:00:11.851) Hmm. Austin (01:00:17.942) Completely unreinforced he drops them in and these right now are being molded but could be Cast I think they're yeah, they're being cast right now and maybe one day they'd be 3d printer or not I don't know and then drops them in cinches them together with an external tension tie all 100 % in compression and get this it saves something like 80 % of materials and on a 25 -story building Micah (01:00:37.581) Mm -hmm. Austin (01:00:44.668) It's, uh, it saves 1200 concrete trucks and 20 kilometers of steel. And it's so cool. Um, and works would work beautifully. Like I want to get these in our, our structural masonry building at some point, but I'm just getting really excited about what you're doing, what he's doing, the actual very, very, very real possibilities of us, even at building calls, to be able to incorporate some of these things in my lifetime. Like, Oh, that gets me so jazzed. Micah (01:00:54.829) Yeah. Micah (01:01:12.109) Yeah, it won't be very long. Yeah, we're hard at work setting up a system and even partnering with some people who have already started working on these systems to be able to just ship to your site completed post -tensioned or pre -tensioned masonry beams. And there's going to be a question of getting all the resources together to build like this. You're going to need a crane. you know, somewhere between five and eight ton crane, actually not that hard to achieve, but, um, the way we construct buildings is going to have to change a little. You're going to have to have the infrastructure for all of it. And you're going have to be able to prove to the market that the costs are lower or the costs are similar and you're saving, you know, 97 % or 96 % of the, of the carbon. Um, so yeah, there's going to be some work to get there and we'll figure out a way to either get really interesting projects to subsidize that at the beginning or get. VC money to subsidize it at the beginning and start building the ecosystem. Austin (01:02:14.908) Well, we plan to be, you know, as I've told you, we've been pretty slow just as well. COVID was pretty rough on the business and I was already moving and starting over in Oklahoma city when we first met, you know, so I've gotten off to a pretty slow start, but with our development coming up, that will be breaking ground later this year. We're absolutely going to be ordering stuff for you. And I don't know exactly how much yet because we have to work in the realm of economics and things are 40 % more expensive today than they used to be four years ago. Cost us 40 % more to build. Um, so we'll be actually using concrete block going back to that masonry based construction system. Micah (01:02:47.405) Well, we're the only thing that's cost is going down in that case. But the great thing is you can come to me with a budget, say, oh, we have 100K, we have 50K. And I can tell you what you can get out of that or we even start. And if your budget is light, you start realizing a lot of the old buildings around you must have had very different budgets. Because if you can do shallow, even a little bit of high relief, but mostly like medium or low relief. Austin (01:02:50.778) Wow. Austin (01:03:01.082) Help. Micah (01:03:16.397) You can cover a whole wall in low, in, in low relief. Um, it's, you know, if you want to like put up a full statue, you're going to pay for it because you have to do all all sides. Um, but we could craft ornament that gets repeated for instance. And when you repeat it and then we don't have to keep programming it, we can make 20 out of one run on a robot and just set it. And it works for two, three days straight. We don't have to do work because that's not what costs a lot of money. What costs a lot of money is us setting it up and calibrating it. and designing it and doing the tool paths. So we can give you blocks, you know, a hundred of the same block with the same design going across, you know, in our place. Yeah. Austin (01:03:54.3) See, that's what I'm talking about. Sills, the stuff like that, decorative pieces just to put in one -sided. And I love the patterns that are going to be possible, you know, where we've done some with sandblasting, but you're just so limited there versus like, I love some Islamic architecture and all the patterns and geometries in there and the intricacies in that. And to be able to start using that in our architecture, I'm just so stoked about. So. Micah (01:04:10.669) We did. Micah (01:04:18.701) Yeah, we're not inventing all this stuff, right? Terracotta is just, you know, keep repeating and figure out cool ways to do it. We'll figure out something cool. That's for sure. Austin (01:04:30.172) Well, I'm excited. We'll have to have you on again after we've installed some stuff in Townsend, which would be 2025 by the time it's actually vertical and some finished stuff. Micah (01:04:35.021) Yeah, we'll do a walkthrough. Micah (01:04:41.869) No worries, we definitely need to get a whole lot more robots to just cover what we're already booked up for now. So by 2025, we should be in position. Austin (01:04:49.116) Cool. Well, that's great. I'm glad to hear that. So, uh, Micah, how do, if anyone else listening wants to get in touch or just follow you, how do people follow you, get in touch with you, order, you know, some, some robot stones. Micah (01:05:02.093) Uh, yeah, go to our website, sign up monumental labs .co .co. You can email me. It's just Micah at monumental labs .co. You can, uh, direct message me on Twitter or X. Uh, you can find me on Instagram. You can find monumental labs and Instagram and Twitter. Um, a lot of my, a lot of the, a lot of the billionaires and, and, uh, and those types of people just see what we're posting and, and DM me that they want to create like. 10 sculptures in a mansion that has, you know, a $2 million sculpture budget. And yeah, it's, it's fascinating. There, there's just an appetite for this stuff. And, uh, yeah, we're going to get beyond our two robots. Hopefully it's 20 pretty soon and, and just, just pump things out. Austin (01:05:36.06) You stepped into the right business at the right time. Austin (01:05:49.852) Incredible. Well, rooting for you, Micah, on what you're doing and what it's going to allow, frankly, me and us and everyone else to be able to do. I think it's a critical piece of the puzzle, being able to build more beautiful, durability for humans. Micah (01:06:04.045) Yeah, I mean, it's working with developers like you who are thoughtful and well, this is where the creativity comes in. It's going to be our collaboration that kind of establishes a new style of architecture. So we'll put our heads together on how to do that. Austin (01:06:20.86) Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on Micah. Micah (01:06:23.351) Thanks Austin.