Furniture Design

Gillian Hause, Junior Designer @ SOM

Varun Maniar, Fabricator @ Chris French Metal, Inc

Independent Furniture Designers

"You wanna build a restaurant? You wanna build a music studio? Know what it is and have a vision for what you want."

Whether it's your own home, a coffee shop, a fitness center, or anything in between, I'm sure we've all wanted to own our own space at some point. Even if that thought has never crossed your mind... now that you're thinking about it, it sounds pretty cool right? In this long-awaited second episode, I fly all the way out to Portland, Oregon for the sole purpose of sitting down with my good friend Michael Anowey, project designer at ZGF Architects and UT School of Architecture classmate. We discuss everything from Mike's background growing up in Lagos, Nigeria and Dallas, Texas and how that's influenced his experience in architecture and design (3:45) two young professionals' opinions on the current state of the architecture industry (23:05) and entrepreneurial opportunities at the intersection of design and development (39:12). Hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed the Portland night life.

Music Entrepreneurship

Dorothy Le

Founder, Asian Memory Project

"Ownership is freedom, competition is irrelevant." For the pilot episode of the podcast, I spoke with my good friend Dorothy Le about music entrepreneurship. In addition to founding the Asian Memory Project, a mixed media nonprofit organization striving to amplify Asian American representation in Austin, Dorothy is also an accomplished flutist graduated from the Butler School of Music at UT Austin. We met in the university orchestra and eventually worked together on her debut event series, "A Studio Ghibli Tribute" and the song "be with you" off my album. Dorothy drops a lot of gems about her experience as a musician and a founder, and I hope you enjoy this debut episode!

Highlights:

• Switching career tracks from performer to founder
• Transferrable skills from being an instrumentalist
• Cultural appropriation vs appreciation in music and architecture
• Creating a modernized concert experience
• Importance of universal design in a performance space
• Experiences of a studio musician, playing like an architect
• "Ownership" comes in many forms

Asian Memory Project Website

Asian Memory Project Instagram

"A Studio Ghibli Tribute" Set Design (By Pranav Subramanian and Maya Hazarika for the Asian Memory Project)

just d.rama - "be with you"