The Many Shades of Green: Bringing Zen Into Your Life

Anjie Cho April 16, 2015

I'm so honored to have been on The Many Shades of Green radio show for another interview with Maxine Margo. This week, Maxine and I talk post-consumer recycling, BTB feng shui, environmental psychology and more on the path to zen. Click here to listen to our newest interview on The Many Shades of Green.

Interview transcript:

Hi, I'm Anjie Cho, registered architect and LEED AP, and this is Holistic Spaces, brought to you by The Many Shades of Green.

Today I’d like to talk to you about an exciting topic: post-consumer recycled materials.

It’s actually pretty confusing – what does recycled mean? What does post-consumer recycled mean? What’s the difference?

Post-consumer recycled content indicates that a portion of the content is made from recycled materials that you or I put in our recycling bins through private or public means. That means this material has gone through the hands of a consumer. Otherwise, just “recycled” means that it was likely made from virgin material such as leftover scraps from factories and over-produced items.

Why post-consumer recycled? When you recycle, it eventually needs to be purchased by someone to recycle. If people like us are purchasing post-consumer recycled products, we create a market demand for those post-consumer materials. Sadly, if there’s no market for the recycling, all the material we recycle may just end up in a landfill.

Also it wouldn’t hurt to have a good percentage of the paper and plastics that already exist to be salvaged and reused for post-consumer recycled products.

In conclusion, I encourage you to make a choice for post-consumer recycled materials whenever possible. By creating a market and demand for post consumer recycled products, we can support and grow the infrastructure for more environmentally GREEN living!

MMR: Hi, I’m Maxine Margo Rubin, and welcome to The Many Shades of Green, our program that engages in conversations that move to raise your eco consciousness. My guest this week on The Many Shades of Green is Anjie Cho, founder of Holistic Spaces. She’s a LEED certified green architect, a BTB Feng Shui Practitioner. She has written a new book entitled 108 Ways to Create Holistic Spaces. How do you create functional, sustainable and balanced spaces within your home by using Feng Shui techniques? What steps can you take to enhance the flow of chi? Anjie will give us some ideas and green tips that will make your home more harmonious and set you on a path to Zen. So Anjie, how are you?

AC: I’m so good Maxine. How are you?

We’re on that path to Zen right now. We’re going to get in to your book in a little bit, but I wanted to get in to Feng Shui right off the bat. It didn’t come in to the States until about the ‘60s, is that right? I read that in one of the paragraphs in your book that I actually read, yes.

My mentor must have written that. Yes, it came in to the ‘60s and it got popular in the ‘70s and ‘80s through professor Lin Yun, who is the founder of the BTB Feng Shui School.

Now BTB Feng Shui, how does that differ from another form of Feng Shui, other areas of it?

There are many schools of Feng Shui. There’s BTB Feng Shui, there’s the Compass School, there’s Classical Feng Shui, there’s Form School. There are a lot of different schools, and also every culture has their own form of geomancy, which means looking at the land and the space and the environment and seeing how to best locate yourself.

So the difference with BTB, generally, is that it’s more of a westernized approach to Feng Shui. It’s more recent, and there are 2 main characteristics. It doesn’t really prioritize the cardinal direction, for instance north, south, east, west aren’t the most important thing. What’s more important is where the energy comes into the space, so that would usually be the front door. We call that the mouth of chi.

The mouth of chi is the front door of an apartment or a house. So when you walk in, you’re going to feel in a particular way because of the energy or the way things are placed or what’s in your house. What would you want to have in your front entrance that will make you feel the energy is positive?

Well, the front entry is the first thing that you see. Even if you live in a house that has a garage and you come in through the garage door, your front entry represents your face to the world and how the world sees you and the first thing that people see. So that symbolism says a lot about how opportunities come to you, how the world sees and views you. So some simple things that can improve the energy of your home looking at your front entry…one is to brighten it up. Make sure that the bulbs you have there are very bright. You have the opportunity to bring a lot of brightness in that space. A light bulb represents fire energy. Another thing is to keep it very clean and tidy, By keeping it clean and tidy, you automatically watch what’s happening in that space. You’re mindful of that space; you pay attention to it on a daily basis. Another thing that you can do is make sure that your door can be found. A lot of times, especially in New York City apartments, you don’t even know how to buzz the front door. There’s no buzzer, there’s no number. If your friends can’t find you, how can opportunities find you?

Yeah, if your friends can’t find you, you’re definitely in a bit of trouble. Now, you mentioned tidy, and I know there’s a lot of different thoughts about tidy. They say geniuses have clutter and then they create through their clutter, I mean, or the clutter just builds up around them but they still can focus. Yet clutter also can present problems in terms of how you’re organized, how your life is, so if something’s cluttered, do you need to work on it forever? Are there steps you can take to start doing it in increments and what is behind that theory of de-cluttering your space?

Well, clutter is really a modern day phenomenon. We didn’t have clutter in ancient times. We didn’t have so much stuff, and that’s one thing that, when we think about green initiatives, we think about reducing, reusing and recycling, but we often forget the first one is reduce. How do we reduce the amount of extra objects that we have in our homes? There’s actually an Einstein quote that says “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”

Right, that’s where my genius reference came in. Thank you Einstein.

Those were actually two extremes. If you have a very cluttered desk where you can’t find anything, of course that impacts how well you work, how clearly you think. But if you have an empty desk, and nothing is going on, then it also means that there’s also nothing going on in your mind, nothing going on in your work, you don’t have anything happening, so that we would say it’s very yin.

So you need balance, actually.

You need to be in the middle. Maybe it needs to be a process of clutter and removing. Because maybe if you take snapshots of the desk at certain times, it might look cluttered, it might look empty, but life isn’t static like that. We’re constantly moving. So when you approach clutter in your home, I think the first thing to think about is: is it really representing a block in your life? Is it really causing angst in your life? For instance, for a while, I had a lot of magazines piling up, and every time I saw them, I thought, “Those magazines that I keep meaning to read and I’m not going to read and they keep piling up.” It becomes a source of guilt and it weighs on you, and that takes up a lot of energy to ignore that. So if it’s representing a block in your life, then it’s definitely something you should address but if it’s not bothering you, you don’t need to worry about it.

I have that with mail. It just piles. The mail I need, I address. The mail I don’t need, which is from anything and any place, it just stays there. We started keeping mail in the mailbox that we didn’t want to bring in, or mail that we didn’t need to address, certain catalogs, certain things. I think we drove our mail lady crazy. Sorry! But again, the clutter issue is definitely a problem, and achieving that balance is the way to go.

Well, there’s that one approach where you only handle it once. Like for your mail, if you touch it, you need to deal with it. So make sure you only have to deal with it one time, so if you touch it, you throw it away or you address it.

That’s one way to approach it. And also it’s okay, like I said, it’s okay to have some clutter. For instance, my sister has 2 daughters and she has a table that’s her homework table. It’s a clutter table. You just throw everything on there, and you make a space in your life to accommodate things that are messy and that you can’t address right away. So maybe it goes in that area and eventually, you clean off that area when you got sick of it.

In achieving this balance, also, it’s, I think, important (and I read) that you take time to meditate and have some space to do that, and if you have a little tiny apartment in New York City, a studio, I mean, how do you figure spots to do that? I mean, where would you go in such a small space?

One of my meditation teachers, he says it’s really great to have a spot that you always go back to. For instance, if you had to make your bed area, for instance you have to create a bed every time you went to sleep, it would be very challenging, and you might just sleep on the floor sometimes. So same thing with meditation; if you don’t have a designated spot, you may not do it very often, because it’s not there. I hear you’re saying, not a lot of people have room, but the space could be while you’re sitting at the edge of your bed, or it could be sitting on your sofa or could be sitting at your desk, because when they talk about space and meditation, it’s not just physical space but also creating space in your mind and creating space between your thoughts and creating space within yourself.

There’s so much stress, and I know people do not take time to meditate which is something they should do. How would you get the message across the people to take that time and as a part of the Feng Shui practice to do that and how would they do that? What message would you tell them?

Well I feel that meditation is definitely an important thing to incorporate in your life, but if you’re not called to do it, maybe that’s not the right thing for you. But if you are called to it, you could go take a class at a meditation center. I go to Shambhala center, and they’ll teach you ways to incorporate it in to your life. I think one of the biggest benefits of meditation for me, is that I rarely take the time to be compassionate enough to myself to give myself a break and just be present and think. I’m always thinking about the next thing I need to do or the next person I need to take care of or the next meal I’m going to have, and that’s all okay, but if I can sit down and just be with my thoughts, then I can let all those thoughts happen and absorb them and watch them, then it creates space in my mind to really be able to focus on things. Otherwise my mind just, without the meditation, your mind just becomes like a wild animal.

Right. Well, people need to take a chill time in their crazy workday, and it’s kind of hard to do, but maybe even connecting to nature, go outside, go to a park. I know there’s eco-psychology which is something that seems to be sprouting up, and again, I saw that in the book, a reference to it. What is that about?

Oh, Environmental Psychology?

Yeah, Environmental Eco Psychology.

There’s one book I was reading where there have been some studies done where people are in hospital spaces, and they heal faster when they see green space or they have access to green space. You can start to see that someone’s actually healing when they begin to look outside of themselves and worry about things besides themselves, so maybe about their environment. So one of the amazing studies they did was, I think they studied the same amount of people with the same surgery, and the ones that had a view to green space and trees healed much faster, and they needed fewer pain killers than the other group.

So the study was in a hospital setting or…

In a hospital setting.

Wow. So the people who saw greenery felt better even looking out a window, not necessarily being outside, but just seeing it, and the people that didn’t weren’t healing as fast. So that really shows you that we need to get outside, and we need to have space outside. Now, how could you bring some of that green inside?

Well, we’ve talked a lot about plants before in these interviews, bringing in plants, but even bringing in the color green. So, you forgot to ask me…

We’re going to get to that in the next half now. We’re really going to get green in the next half, because I want to hear all these shades that I don’t even know about.

Well, you can definitely bring in some plants, and not just small, little, dinky forage plants but bring in a big, 3 foot fern or ficus tree or something. Bring in some living plants. Not only does that bring greenery in to your space, it improves the air quality, and it improves your ability to take are of something outside of yourself. It works in a lot of ways. And also bringing in the color green, because the colors of nature are much more soothing to the eye. We’ve just evolved that way, and that’s another thing that these environmental psychologists have studied: how colors affect our eyes, how it affects our wellbeing and our emotions.

So we’re going to talk about more green because I’m very interested in various shades of green, or the many shades of green.

We’re here with Anjie Cho. We’re talking about green things and Feng Shui and the relationship with color and space and energy. There’s something called the bagua map which has 8 trigrams. We’re going to learn now what that is, and then we’ll focus on some of the colors, one of them being one of my favorites, well, my favorite color, which is green. So can you give us a little background on that bagua map?

Sure. The bagua map is the Feng Shui map, and it’s a conceptual grid. It’s a 3 by 3 grid, and it creates 9 different areas, although there are 8 trigrams, but that’s for another conversation. The 9 areas represent 9 different areas of your life, and it has different connections. For instance, the first one we’ll probably talk about is new beginnings, which is related to green, and it’s related to wood, the element of wood. It’s related to a certain area of your home, it’s related to family, it’s related to the spring. It’s also related to Chinese medicine, the meridians. They also use the 5 elements in Daoism; it’s the same thing.

What are the 5 elements again, so the people know?

The 5 elements are wood, fire, water, metal and earth.

Okay. There’s a group called Earth, Wind and Fire so they’re pretty close.

They’re close, they’re missing one...

I love their group,

… the metal. They’re a metal group, right?

They use metal, right. So in terms of the colors and the numbers, there’s a number associated with each color as well. So let’s start with green. Also, how many shades of green are represented? Tell me about that.

The green area of the Feng Shui map is called, the Chinese name is Zhun, and it’s related to new beginnings and family, and also it relates to the season of spring, like I mentioned before. It’s interesting we’re talking about the many shades of green, because there are many shades of green. What do they represent? I would say very light green would be a very yang green. When you think about light green, you think of a sprout pushing out of the ground and there’s that very forceful energy…

To push it out.

… to push it out, yeah, to come out of the shell, to push through the soil and to really grow. That’s why sprouts are so nutritious, because they have all those enzymes, and they’re really full of life energy, so that would be lighter green. As you get medium green, that’s more neutral. You remember earlier we’re talking about balance, you can go to one extreme with other. Medium green would be in the middle. Dark green would be more related to a mature tree. Think of a huge…

A redwood or something?

… a redwood, yeah! That deep dark green relates more to knowledge. The greens, in general, are all very healing and supportive, because the color is really comforting to us, and it also reminds us of growth and trees and expansion and change and moving on to a better place from where we are now, so it represents new beginnings as well.

New beginnings and plants and trees and grass, but there are also blue-green waters. There are deep green waters, so that’s another thing. That’s a flow. You need water for anything to live. So is there a water sign? Is there a water color? Is there a water number?

Well actually, green and blue are both related to wood in Feng Shui system. Wood element is related to plants and greenery and life and that cycle of life. Water is actually related to the color black, which is depth of wisdom. If you think about an ocean, if you’re out in the middle of the ocean and you’re looking at the water, you actually see black. There’s so much going on underneath, and you can’t see what’s happening underneath but there’s a lot of motion and a lot of activity deep in the ocean, so that’s where black comes from.

Now, these were all from the Chinese Feng Shui, ancient…how far back does this map go? I mean, just curious about the origins of it and what the thoughts of the ancient Chinese people were when they, whoever, developed this.

Well this Feng Shui bagua map that I use is a newer map so it’s I don’t know how many thousands of years, but it is quite old, but there was one before that called the former heaven bagua, and I don’t think I’m qualified to talk about it today, because it’s really complicated, but it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit different, but water is also related to this black area of the bagua map which is related to your career and your path in life and how you move through the world.

It’s interesting because when we think black...people dress in black at funerals, people, black…

In China, they wear white and they wear black at weddings, or they used to.

Interesting. So it’s kind of a different, an Asian culture thing that brings different colors to different things so I would imagine that white at a wedding…

Well black is also…

Black in the wedding?

So black is the absorption of all colors, and white is actually the reflection of all colors, so white is almost absence of color where black incorporates all color. So it makes sense that it’s knowledge and depth of knowledge because it’s absorbing all the energies to create that black.

What about red?

So red. Red is…

Got to get red in there, fiery and cool…

Exactly. Red is very fiery, it’s passionate, it’s related to fame, the fame area of the Feng Shui bagua map and...

Fame? So all the celebs have like red things in their…

They have good fire chi, yeah. It’s how the world sees you and how people recognize you. It’s your reputation and how you appear to others.

I also saw in the book to get red sheets, get red lingerie so…

Yes. Are you wearing any red lingerie today?

I’m not even, I’m actually wearing black and blue. I don’t know.

Actually there’s fashion Feng Shui too, how it affects your clothes. So the blue is actually very, it’s like a royal blue, but I would say with the black, you’re dressed very water.

I’m water? I like the water. Born in August, I like the water. So this information is in the book and there’s also a lot of tips in the book. Could we go over a couple of tips for people to be conscious of saving and reducing and things that they should be looking out for in terms of what they need to do to make their carbon footprint a little less as well?

Sure. My book is about really simple things to incorporate Feng Shui and green design in to your home. So one is that you could stop using bottled water and to get a filter in your home. I love to get the seltzer machines so you don’t have all those seltzer bottles. That’s one really easy way. Another is to look in to getting a green energy provider into your home so you’re not just getting the regular dirty energy but you’re putting your dollars towards renewable energy like wind energy.

We have green energy, I have them, I use them so…

Great.

Anything like them, they have similar companies out there so that’s really important. What other tip can we have for the spring? One more.

One more. To refresh your space by getting rid of 9 things in your closet.

9 things in your closet?

Yes, 9 things. Can you do it?

Can I do it? You come to my house, oh God, I can’t even imagine what is going to happen over there but…

Once you move 9 things out of your closet, I promise you, things will start moving in your life.

Okay, I’m going to start doing that, because I need to be moving. So those were some tips. I hope everyone jotted all those things down and we’ll jot them down, and Anjie, thanks for being here.

You’re welcome, thank you for having me.

Okay. We’ve been talking with Anjie Chi, founder of Holistic Spaces, Feng Shui practitioner and designer as well as a LEED certified architect. Anjie has written a new book entitled 108 Ways to Create Holistic Spaces which is available on amazon.com and you could also go to, what’s your web?

AnjieCho.com with a J, A – N – J – I – E – C – H – O.com or holisticspaces.com.

Okay, I wanted to get that in there. So this book will definitely help you lead a greener and more balanced life, which is good for the soul. So thanks for joining us for The Many Shades of Green.

by Anjie Cho

About the host

Maxine Margo Rubin has been involved with the media business as a content producer and part-time co-host for Air America (Marc Sussman’s Money Message), and hosted and produced Village Green on WDFH, a show which focused on topics of environmental sustainability and progressive social issues.

Visit the Holistic Spaces Store

Feng Shui and Color for Spring on The Home Discovery Show

Anjie Cho March 29, 2015

last week on the Home Discovery Show

How can feng shui and changing colors help you adjust to each season? What effect do you have on your environment? The Home Discovery Show's Ian Power and I talk color, lighting and what it means for newly budding spring. Check it out!

Interview Transcript:

IP: Home Discovery Show is on the Corus Radio Network. My name is Ian Power. I want to bring in Anjie Cho, a holistic interior architect and author, sought after expert in the fields of Feng Shui and Green Design. A registered architect and certified Feng Shui practitioner, Anjie creates beautiful spaces throughout New York and beyond. The entire world is yours Anjie. Nice to have you on with us again.

AC: Hi Ian, so nice to be back.

Your book is already a best seller. Congratulations. That’s quite an accomplishment! That also tells us that there’s a huge interest in the things that you do and you talk about. Your book is 108 Ways to Create Holistic Spaces: Feng Shui and Green Design for Healing and Organic Homes. Just a quick overview on your book.

Well, my book is 108 tips in which you can incorporate Feng Shui and Green Design principles in your home. Simple things like what colors mean and what they symbolize or how can you save water in your bathroom, just small little digestible bits that are easy to implement so you really have no excuse not to do it.

Excellent. What’s happening in New York right now? You’re in New York. Is it snowing, raining, slitting?

It is getting a little bit warmer. It’s still pretty cold. It’s 40 degrees; I don’t know what that is in Celsius, but the snow is gone. It did snowed on the equinox though, which was a couple of days ago.

Well, here we’ve been in full on spring mode for at least a couple of weeks and last time we spoke, we wanted to get you back during spring to talk about color, because I know that’s really important. What is the relationship between spring, color, Feng Shui and how it relates to interior design? Can you talk about that a little bit?

Sure, of course. Humans are very visual. We’re very visual people, so color is a really great and easy way to change the feeling of your home and to change the mood in your home. So you could either do that with paint or adding accents, and spring is a great time to kind of refresh things. Spring is about new beginning and starting anew, so great spring color is green. Greens are really healing and they represent growth, and blues are also similar to greens. Blues and greens are both very comforting and they’re healing, because they actually remind us of the natural world, and the wavelengths are actually shorter, so in a physical way, it’s more comforting to our eyes.

That’s interesting. When you say blue, most people, when you just say the word “blue,” they think of the “blues” and they also think that blue, the color, is a little bit colder.

Well, it really depends on what shade of blue of course, right? So grayer blues can be cooler and maybe more depressing, and if you have that thought when you think of the color blue, then definitely go for green which is more hopeful. But we’re also talking about summer too, which will soon be around the corner, and as it gets warmer, that’s when, actually, blue is really good because it is cooling, and the color blue actually helps to cool down your spaces.

Okay. I’m thinking now, I don’t want to paint every season, obviously, so will these colors still work in the winter time when that rolls around eventually?

Absolutely. And besides painting the walls, you can add accents into your home through plants or pillows or rugs. Pillows, you can easily change up and plants are green all the time, but green is actually great for all year round because plants reminds us of the seasons, because they usually reflect what’s happening. Indoor plants like a little bit darker green in the colder months and they might start to flower in the spring and summer months, and that reminds us of the change of season.

Does Feng Shui play into the colors or the colors into Feng Shui? How does one relate to the other?

Feng Shui looks a lot at color and so, again, the colors, for instance green and blue, are very comforting and expansive, and they also represent the wood element. When you think of the wood element, you think of a plant, a plant that’s growing and expanding and growing from a small seed and growing in to huge redwood tree. You think about that growth and going from that energetic little sprout to a big, grounded, supported tree, and that symbolism can affect your life when you surround yourself with things like plants or the colors green and blue, because it encourages the growth and expansion in your life.

You do, obviously, residential properties. You also do commercial properties. When you’re doing an office, for example in a commercial property, is there a different technique or different form of Feng Shui applied to, let’s say, a commercial office than, let’s say, your home office?

In terms of color? They’re pretty similar, I think your home office and your work office, but for instance, a retail store, you might want more active colors like orange and red. I’m doing a retail store right now that we have a lot of black. You have more opportunities to get more exciting, I guess. In homes and offices, you want something more neutral, because you spend much more time in there and so your mind and your eyes don’t want to be activated all the time. You want to also have some time for rest and relaxation.

How about lighting inside the home? What role does that play in Feng Shui?

Lighting is really important. One thing that people don’t realize is that light represents the fire energy, so when you have more light and you have a home that’s able to be brightly lit, that represents being able to have more opportunities for advancement and to be able to see. Do you see the metaphor? When you have a lot of light, you can see more clearly what’s coming towards you. And it doesn’t mean that you need to have your lights at full blast all the time, but having the opportunity to clearly see your space around you translates into your ability to see opportunities coming to you and to your life.

Sure. And one of the things that, and we have to leave it here, but it must be noted that a lot of what you do, and I don’t know if it’s just your practice, Anjie Cho, if it’s Feng Shui related, but you’re very eco-conscious and you’re very energy efficient in all the things that you do.

Well I think that when you say energy, that can go in two ways. That can be a more esoteric energy, but also actual electrical energy, and they go hand and hand. My hope is that people begin to see how you can impact the environment around you and how, in turn, the environment can impact you. Once you realize you have that ability to change the world around you, and it can change you and support you, you really become able to shape a happy and nurturing life.

Holisticspaces.com is the website for Anjie Cho, interior architect, author and sought after expert in Feng Shui and Green Design....Anjie, thanks so much for your time. We’re gonna get you back in a short time from now, and we’re going to talk more about this and learn more about what you do. We really appreciate your time. Anjie Cho, HolisticSpaces.com. And we’ll be back in a moment on The Home Discovery Show on the Corus Radio Network.

Click here to listen to my other interviews with the Home Discovery Show.

by Anjie Cho

From the leaky faucet upstairs, to an entire back yard overhaul, when it comes to projects around your home, the advice you need is heard weekly on Vancouver’s CKNW Home Discovery Show.

Join Ian Power every Sunday from 10 to 11 am PT as he’s joined by experts on home renovations and upgrades, plus the latest tools and tricks from the trades.

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Coffee Break with Sabra: How to Get Started Renovating Your New York City Apartment

Anjie Cho March 6, 2015

I'm excited to be featured on Sabra Sasson's "Coffee Break with Sabra!" For this interview, we chatted about what it takes to get a renovation project started in New York City, and how having an architect along for the ride can really be an asset. Check out what we have to say!

Interview transcript:

SS: Welcome to The Coffee Break with Sabra where we answer your burning questions, the questions you didn’t ask, didn’t know to ask or were afraid to ask. We ask them for you. Each week, we bring you another 20 minutes, so that you can get your answers and get back to having a productive and fabulous day. Today, we are here with Anjie Cho. She is the bestselling author of 108 Ways to Create Holistic Spaces, Feng Shui and Green Design for Healing and Organic Homes. Anjie is an architect for clients such as Satya Jewelry and is a sought after expert in the fields of Feng Shui and Green Living. Anjie Cho is a registered architect and certified Feng Shui consultant. As a graduate in architecture from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California Berkeley, she’s been creating beautiful and nourishing environments since 1999. And today, she’ll be speaking with us about how to get started renovating your New York City apartments. Welcome to the program Anjie.

AC: Hi Sabra! Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. I think that this is a really fabulous topic to talk about today. I know that when people buy real estate, whether it’s a house or apartment, a lot of times they want to put a little bit of themselves into the place, their own style, maybe through decorations or the right piece of furniture or paint, but sometimes a little bit more drastic measures are taken into account, like structural changes and things like that. So I thought it might be good if you could start out with talking with us about those instances where an architect is needed and maybe point out some nuances where New York City maybe unique to other areas.

Sure, of course. So I’m a licensed architect in New York City, and a lot of times when clients or perspective clients give me a call, they really want to know if they needed an architect. So in New York City, it’s a little bit unique because we have a lot of apartment renovations rather than single family homes. So if you have an apartment, this is geared towards you, and it’s not going to be as relevant if you’re talking about Brooklyn with a single family home or somewhere outside of New York City, so mostly Manhattan. So to look at whether you need an architect, generally, it really actually depends on the requirements of your condo board or your co-op board but technically, legally, New York City would want to have you file for permit with an architect for any time that you move, add or remove walls. So those are the times that you have to have an architect. Now, if you’re just painting your apartment, that you don’t need an architect for. And sometimes, if your co-op board or condo board is more lax, they may not make you file for anything, but technically, legally you’re supposed to file, does that make sense?

Yeah, definitely. Can you clarify little bit more?

Yes. So for instance, I do a lot of apartment combinations, so if you’re combining two apartments, it someone has an apartment and they buy the apartment next door to make a larger apartment, they want to combine them. So you would then be removing a wall and combining the apartments or a lot of times, people want to open up their kitchen to the living room now. If you take out that wall, you generally need to use an architect. There’s also another instance. If you want to move plumbing around, say if you have your kitchen sink on one wall but you want to move it under the window, most building management boards will require you to file that work with an architect.

So this comes to a point, there’s a difference between a designer and architect. Now, I’m a licensed architect. That means that, just like you Sabra, like with an attorney or as a doctor, I’ve taken exams. I actually took 9 exams. I apprenticed for a number of years, 7 years actually. I have a degree in architecture and I’ve also passed all these exams in order to become a licensed professional in the State of New York. I have to do continuing education. Licensed architects are only people that actually say they’re architects and the only people that can sign off on your drawing. Well, actually, you could get a licensed engineer, a professional engineer, to sign off on your drawings too, but you need a licensed, either a PE or RA, which is a registered architect or professional engineer, to sign off on the drawings to submit to the city for you to get permit to do that work. So that’s when you need an architect.

Now, with a designer, there are no certifications required or licensing required in New York for a designer. So someone could wake up tomorrow and decide they want to be a designer, but in order to the work legally, you need to find a licensed architect. So that’s really important. If you do need to do work with an architect, make sure that the person you’re working with is not misleading you and telling you that they might be an architect when they’re not.

That’s really important. So it sounds like it’s essential, actually, to these projects because you need to have the sign off in order for them to what, be legal?

Yes. So, for instance, most co-op boards won’t even let you do the work without a permit, so you would have to hire a separate architect, if you hired a designer, that could sign off on the project. So you would have to pay extra for another architect to do the work, if you could find an architect that will work with a designer, because usually, there’s a little bit of a conflict between those two parties as well.

But I also wanted to go back and talk a little bit more about how you know you’ll need an architect. Usually what I tell my clients and perspective clients is to contact your condo or co-op board, and ask for something called the “alteration agreement.” This alteration agreement documents and outlines all the requirements required for you to do any kind of work in your building. Even it doesn’t require an architect, they generally want you to look at the alternation agreement. There might be a decorating agreement as well, if you’re just doing paint, and that tells you all the insurances that are required, and specifics they have required, the hours of work of the building and so forth. That’s also a good opportunity to open up a conversation with either the management, or maybe the super in your building, to say, “Hey, I want to just take down this wall between my kitchen and living room. Do you know if they’re going to make me submit a permit or get a permit for this?” So it’s a good way to start conversations, but it changes with each building. But like I said, technically, if you take out any walls, if you move, remove or add any walls or relocate any plumbing, you are required by the city to do the work, but not all buildings will require that. Some buildings will let you get away with it without getting a permit. The only danger is that, say a neighbor wants to complain, and you don’t have a permit, they can complain. They can ask the DOB, the Department of Buildings, to come and do an inspection, and then you would have to stop work and you would be fined and then you would have to file the work.

So your project can be interrupted if a neighbor complains and you don’t have the proper permit is what you’re saying?

Correct. All work would cease, and you would have to resolve all the issues before you could continue the work.

Interesting. Wow! That would be such a pain.

Yeah. Actually I was working on a project one time where this happened not because they didn’t have a permit…They did have a permit, but they didn’t have the right documentation onsite. You’re required to have the approved plans onsite and, for some reason, an inspector came by the building to visit another site. He stopped by this job site, and the contractor could not find the approved plan so he shut down the building and that was terrible. I literally had to wait outside for the inspector to come back the next day. I waited the whole day. He kept telling me “I’m coming.” He ended up coming like 4:45. I waited the whole day for him to open up the job again.

Wow, wow. So it really could cost a lot of money if you don’t have the right paperwork and the right documents in place and complying with that rule of having the plans on the premises where doing the work.

Exactly.

Wow. So how does one go about finding or selecting an architect or someone to manage the project?

Well, my suggestion is to always ask first around. Just like for a doctor or a dentist or an attorney, ask for referrals. Talk to your friends or anyone that’s done a renovation recently and ask around. You can also when you ask your management for the alteration agreement, ask them, “Are there any architects that you like working with in the building?” That’s going to give you a little bit of an edge, and they’ll be familiar at the space. Of course, I’m an architect and I’m also available too. Once you’ve got 1 or 2 or, 3 maybe, that you’re looking at, I would give them a call and talk to them. Tell them about your project and see what their availability is. Number one, see if you get along with them, because you’re going to be working closely with this person, and I get a lot of people who ask me, “How much is this going to cost?” You have to understand, it’s hard for an architect to give you an estimate on their work if you don’t know what work you’re doing. So be clear about what scope you want, how much involvement you want with your architect, and talk to them too. An architect could hand hold you through the whole process, or they could be more hands off and just help you with the design or help you get the filing done. So really be clear about how much you want, and also be clear about your budget. Tell them what your budget is for construction, because that’s going to give them a good estimate on what their fees are. Generally, I think architects in New York charge between 10% and 20% of your construction cost, but that depends on how much hand holding you need during the process. An architect could come to your job site every week and check everything out, or they could not come at all, and you could just take over. So be clear about or think about your options on how much you want. What’s your budget? Think about if you can afford an architect and how much hand holding and involvement you want from them.

So let me ask you, so in terms of the architect role, it sounds like there can be a wide range of what the responsibilities are for the architect, and it sounds like it also could be more than just helping with the design of the project, as you called it.

Yes. If I was going to do a full service contract with someone, how we would start is we would do a conceptual design together, where I would meet with them and talk to them about their needs, look at how they live, what their requirements are, what their budget is and their scheduling is. Then we can walk through some conceptual design ideas.

For instance, I just finished an apartment combination a few months ago, and with this client, we did a full service contract. So we sat down for a few meetings and found trace paper and pens and paper and really looked at her options on how to lay out the space. Tthen I proceeded with putting together what’s required for the permit drawings to get that started, because the process with the DOB takes 4 – 6 weeks, not including the time it takes to get all the signatures from management and so forth. So we got that started, and then I helped her select contractors. So we picked 3 contractors where we did a walkthrough with a good set of bid documents, which is really important too, because as an architect can provide you with bid documents, which is a set of drawings that outlines the scope of work graphically and with text. So when you walk through with the contractor without an architect, what happens is that each contractor will say, “Well, what about this, what about this, what about this?” They’re trying to be helpful. So at the end of the day, you end up with prices from three different contractors, and they’re not pricing the same thing because 1, the conversation may have change with each visit, because they have different suggestions. Number two, there are no documents stating what is the scope of work that clearly states that these are the things you’re going to purchase. You may be thinking you want to get this really cool door, but they’re going to price the cheapest things, because when they competitively bid something, they’re going to price the most competitively priced item. So at the end of the day, the price can be like a moving target. An architect can help you get a firm price. For the most part, all of my projects, we bid it out, devise some of the drawings and competitively bid it out. We include my drawings as part of the contract document, and there are almost never any change orders, which is a change in price, so you know what you’re getting into.

And then other things that I could do is, like I said, I could do a weekly site visit where I work with the contractor to work out any design problems that occur or design issues that occur during the project. I also can help the client design the kitchen, help them layout the kitchen, bathrooms, floor tiles, what to look for. There’s so many things I can do, and then I also review payment requisitions too. You don’t want to really pay a contractor for more than what they’ve done in the case if they go out of business. You want to be able to walk away from a general contractor and still finish your work without losing any money. So I review payment requisitions and make sure that you’re good to pay it without overpaying. Because a lot of people like clients end up thinking, “Oh, we’re done,” and then they pay them all the money, but then there are punch list things, which are little small items that the contractors fix, but if you pay them all their money, they have no incentive to come back. So I advise on payment, I advise on what needs to be done, what’s typical, what’s not typical, there’s a lot, and we end up really actually saving the owners money.

Wow. That sounds amazing. All of this that you’ve described, you gave such really wonderful advice, because, you know the expression, you’ve got to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. You just gave the whole example. If you’re bringing in several contractors then the conversation changes. They’re not really comparing Project X to Project X. They’re comparing Project X, which has now been tweaked by the contractor, so that’s an amazing service that you offer to help people to understand what they’re actually getting a quote for to make sure that it’s all for the same project.

Exactly. At the bare minimum, I always, almost every client that I work with, I at least do the bid documents for them to make sure that they get an apples to apples comparison between the contractors, as well as my opinion on the contractor and my advice. Also, like I said, those documents, those bid document drawings go in as part of the contract documents in the contract that you sign with the GC, and in my drawings, I have a lot of notes, general notes, that cover things like, for instance, you may think you’re going to get your paint included, but then they say, “We only included that you get the ready-mix white paint.” So you think, “No, I don’t want to pay extra to get blue paint.” Little things like that. Also defining, “You need primer, plus 2 coats of Benjamin Moore paint in something other than ready-mix colors.” Things like that, that I know about, but the average home owner won’t know about. So this way you can cover yourself, make sure you get the best products. The architect really is a client’s rep, so we watch out for the client.

That’s awesome. In terms of these projects, if somebody wants to make a renovation, how would you say is the first step? Is the first step looking at the alteration agreement and then looking for an architect, if it’s necessary or required by the board? Where would somebody start? What would be the first step?

I think the first step would be to talk to your board or talk to your management or your super. If you’re close with your super in the building and he’s very involved, just ask the super, because he usually knows everything that’s going on. Let them know, “Oh, we’re thinking of doing a little bit of work,” and ask him what he thinks the process is for you, and then you can always reach out to your management and get the alteration agreement. Then ask around for architects and find a few that you want to reach out to, and give them a call or email them, and just talk to them on the phone. You could send them a plan, if you have a plan of your apartment, and just start a conversation going.

Fantastic. So I wanted to just quickly ask if you could tell our listeners how they can reach you if they have any questions about their upcoming projects and if you have any final words for us.

Well, you can reach me through my website. It’s www.anjiecho.com, and that’s spelled A – N – J – I – E – C – H – O.com, and any perspective clients can always call me directly. My phone number is on the website, or email me directly. That’s another thing that you should look at with the architect, too. You might want to see if you’re actually going to be talking to the architect throughout the process or if they have a bigger firm and you’re going to be talking to a project manager or someone lower level. I know, I basically do all the design, and I have freelancers and some staff and interns that help me, but I am the one designing. I’m the one who’s contacting the client all the time, and I also am available. I always respond within 24 hours, and that’s something that you should ask. How long will it take you to respond to emails, and will I be working with you? Maybe you don’t mind if you’re working with a project manager, or maybe you really want to work with the architect, but in any case, I’ll respond to all the emails and I’m the main contact with all my clients, so anyone can reach out to me with any questions.

Fantastic. And I feel that anyone who is considering renovation in their place should definitely consider reaching out to you, because you’re very knowledgeable and you have so much experience, and you’re really great to talk to, so I think working with you would probably be really easy.

That’s what my clients say. That’s another thing too! Sorry, one more thing. You can also ask the architects you talk to provide you with some references that you can call too. That’s really important.

That’s a great point, probably with anybody that you work with. You might want to compare and find out what the experience was with other clients that they have worked with.

Absolutely.

Fabulous. Thank you so much Anjie. Thank you for being here.

You’re welcome! Thank you so much, Sabra. It’s always so much fun. We always have so much to talk about.

Yes we do. There’s always really interesting information and fascinating stories that you share. So I want to thank you again for joining us this week and join us again next week during our weekly Coffee Break with Sabra.

by Anjie Cho