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AR: You detail to the extreme, which is labor- and time-intensive. How do you justify that level of engagement, time, and effort in our fast-moving, digital society? You're out of step.

JC: It's got to be simple logic: The more you draw, the more you know, the more you're going to be able to integrate. But more important, sometimes my clients aren't well off, so getting it right means a lot. Our historic average on omission errors—that is, changes that happened because we missed something—is about 1 percent. That's because everything's in the drawing, which has a bad side: It scares the hell out of most small contractors.

We publish freehand, not CAD. I draw on 81⁄2-by-11-inch pads, often when I travel. From here to New York is 25 details. I'm serious. It's 25 details. The drawings give my staff a much better understanding of where I'm headed.

But what other value does this kind of detailing have? Doing things well seems to be a better way. It sustains me, gives me self-esteem. We don't have a lot of time on earth, so why not do our best and feel really good about it? But that sometimes makes us not very commercially viable. I just did a federal building, and it was really hard to get it on budget and not lose my shirt and be able to justify it to my partners.

AR: But do other people in your office do CAD?

JC: Yeah. But I find AutoCAD, the industry standard, sucks. There's nothing more capable of making my employees stupid than AutoCAD, because they can draw something two-dimensionally and it looks right to them, but they're not seeing three-dimensionally. So there's a dimension they miss, and things don't fit.

AR: Today, you're working all over the United States, in Florida, New York, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Oregon, California, as well as in Europe, in Spain and Australia. How do you manage to keep a high level of care when you're spread so thin?

JC: It's a combination of a lot of things. In Spain, I had a great client, a real gem of a client. I had 18 months to build the building. I had a contractor who at first seemed slow as molasses. And actually was slow as molasses throughout, but he ultimately produced a great product and there wasn't aggravation. We had a teamwork relationship. I have contractors like that. I make sure to have thorough contract documents. I did every detail, which, hopefully, creates better jobs.

AR: Do you say "no" to clients?

JC: Yes, but there are also building types I've always wanted to do: a shopping mall and a suburb. We are doing one multifamily complex—18 three-story houses on an acre—here on the island. It's been sitting on the table for two years, all drawn, and waiting for financing. Housing today is built without the slightest regard for privacy or green space that extends the living area. So I wanted to do a multifamily building that could maybe twist the paradigm. We are working with Lindal Cedar Homes.

AR: Tell us about your relationship with Lindal Homes.

JC: They hired us about two years ago. They have this numbering system for each component. We redesigned the whole line in accordance with a couple of prototypes we designed.

AR: Sort of a low-tech, premanufactured solution, isn't it?

JC: We designed all the buildings so they were in pieces I can manipulate. The smaller the pieces, the more apt the whole is to fit well into a landscape. The ethic of how you fit the building into the landscape is important. We may be able to bring what we do to a larger market. From my standpoint, it's a worthy endeavor.

AR: When you present your ideas—which are, in a sense, classic architectural values—to young people, are they responsive? Is this a message that they listen to now?

JC: I've gotten mixed results. I got evaluation ratings for one class I taught that said they thought my lectures didn't have much intellectual content. They were totally sucked in by Peter Eisenman and his ideas. It's such a Western, Renaissance concept to think that if something is not rational it's not intellectual. Rationalism and intellectualism are not synonymous.

End.