How 3D Visualization Prevents $100,000 Construction Mistakes

Sean Weisbrot: Architecture is evolving fast. In this episode, I'm joined by Brian Corillo, CEO of Design Blend to unpack how AI 3D design and virtual reality and augmented reality are transforming how we build, live and collaborate from cost cutting visualizations to the rise of virtual spaces and AI agents. This is the future of architecture where physical meets digital and ideas are immersive if you care about where design is headed. You don't wanna miss this. What's the most profound thing you've seen change in the last 10 years running this business?

Brian Corcodilos: It's a great question. I think it's definitely the intersection of the built and virtual world by far. You know, my company, we help people create beautiful images of things that don't exist yet. And that technology has continued to advance and advance and you know, the images and things we look at in magazines, there's a good chance they were created. With, you know, computer generated images or CGI. Um, but when you combine that power with making things look real and, and overlap that with architecture, interior design and engineering, you start to create really, you know, create and solve, you know, problems for clients all around the nation.

Sean Weisbrot: Is it cost effective to do these kinds of designs? Surely it's, it's very difficult to do and requires a lot of people and time

Brian Corcodilos: when, 'cause I get, I get that question all the time. Oh, this is more expensive, why would I pay for that? And when you, you know, visualization is one thing and you see that in movies. But when my company, we apply it, you know, specifically to buildings, right? So if we're designing a building and you know, we go through the entire schematic design process, we're picking out materials, finishes. And we don't know what it's gonna look like At the end of the day, you can end up spending a hundred x what it would cost to visualize something when you wanna rip out tile. 'cause you don't like the way it looks in real life. So what we tell our clients is you're either gonna pay for it now or you're gonna more than pay for it later during construction. And look, the visualization is just a piece of it. You know, when we're designing buildings, we're doing everything in 3D and. You know, we're able to quantify the building 'cause we know how many sheets of drywall, two by fours, you know, how much concrete things like that. We can start quantifying the building and making decisions way earlier on before we get to the field and find a problem.

Sean Weisbrot: So you're not just. Laying out the inside, you're actually doing the foundational work for the client to make sure that they know what they're trying to build. So you're, you're in essence developing the floor plan so that they can tell this to whoever's gonna be providing the license for them. Great

Brian Corcodilos: question. Like what, what is it actually we're doing? Right. So, you know, traditionally as an architect, you know, and you can look at, I love going on looking like old picture of architects, like slaving over top of like, you know. Big drafting tables, right? Working all night long, drawing single line weights right on paper. That's always the export, right? The single line weights and like that's what we submit to townships and and cities to get permits. But behind that, in the virtual world, not on paper, those line weights have depth to them. Right? So when I'm drawing a wall and or I don't say I don't get to do much anymore. I don't let me touch drawings, but when my team's drawing walls, right, there's 3D components to that. That wall contains. Uh, exterior cladding. That wall has, uh, you know, drywall, it has insulation, it has studs all within that parameter. So that 2D line work you see on paper that has the exact, you know, the dimension right of that line work, but behind it. We're now quantifying what's in that wall, and we're using that 3D environment to run clash detections to see if HVAC ducts or soffits or plumbing components are buildable. Before, you know, we get out into the field and realize that, hey, this, this plumbing pipe runs right into a steel beam. Now you have a 30 to a hundred thousand dollars change order.

Sean Weisbrot: I can definitely understand the value in trying to save money if you're building mm-hmm. Things at scale. You said that there's studs and drywall and all of these things. Are these, like, is every stud put in one at a time into this design? Like how detailed, how precise, you know, how long does it take to make this kind of stuff?

Brian Corcodilos: So it, the level of detail depends on the type of project, right? If we're doing a single family home, we might not put as much detail into. You know, the 3D model that's needed, it's still gonna have 3D components. You're still gonna wanna make sure soffits and things line up. But a, you know, a two, three story home is very simple compared to a. You know, municipal con complex, right? Police, you know, EMS fire, right? So there's more complexities, the bigger the building gets, and the more expensive the building, right? So certain uses, you know, facilities management, things like that have more components to that building than a a residential home. So the detail of that 3D model does change depending on the type of use. But we also wanna make sure, right, to your point, it's cost effective. People to do this. So we, we don't think our pricing is any more egregious than any other firm out there. We're actually somewhere in the middle, and with us, you get the same, you know, you get even more support and technology behind you and innovation in the, in the architectural profession.

Sean Weisbrot: How is AI affecting that work?

Brian Corcodilos: It's interesting, you know, right now there's, there's places you can go. Insert a, you know, a 2D image right of line work and say, Hey, make it look like X, Y, and Z, and it'll spit something out and it'll look cool. And to most people that might suffice. One of the things, at least on our visualization side, why we get hired to do that is for some of the largest and most expensive real estate in the world. Because when you're selling a three, $4 million condo, you know. The view out to the mountains in Telluride, Colorado matters for somebody, right? You can't sell a fake view at that level. You can't say, this is what the kitchen's gonna look like, and then put in a different faucet. It might fly on a smaller residential or apartment, right? You're trying to lease an apartment that's different. But our team gets brought in when stuff has to look a hundred percent accurate with no room for air. There's no 98% accurate in our visualizations.

Sean Weisbrot: So are you sending someone to go take a picture from the, from the, the foundation of the building that hasn't been built yet? Of what the mountain's gonna look like, 10 stories high and the AI just knows how to put it in correctly?

Brian Corcodilos: Yeah. Great, great question. So it's actually a combination of things. The software we use to model the virtual world is what they use to create movies in. So like Game of Thrones, when you see those scenes where, you know, they have a, a drone flying over the beautiful, you know, mountaintops of, uh, you know, Ireland, right? And you then you see the horses and the dragons and all that. That technology of how to create that is we're using those same software packages and things, but we, we apply that to real estate mainly and some product stuff. But essentially, you know, if we, if we're doing a, a, a shot of the building from the street level looking up. We'll make sure we have a street view of what's currently there with the surrounding context, and then we can drop in the new, you know, proposed, you know, rendering or virtual world on top of that existing image. So that's one way we do it. We also do that with drone, right? So we have still shots. We can take a still shot of the city from above, looking down at the site and then superimposed the, the virtual, you know, new. Buildings that are gonna be there someday into it to make it look like it's already there and done. The other thing that gets so exciting is we do some drone, like I mentioned with the Game of Thrones, right? We do drone pathing. So if we fly a drone out there looking at the site or through a community, we can then superimpose that virtual world on top. So it's almost like it comes to life as you're flying through it, but it doesn't exist yet, but it looks like it's there and that's, that's the challenging part for clients to, you know. They're like, wait a second, how you can make this look done? And that's where we say, yeah, that's why, that's why we have, why we're still in business. You know, we make things look like they're done before they even start.

Sean Weisbrot: So are you essentially building like a. Google Street view, but inside of a building and the building doesn't exist.

Brian Corcodilos: Yeah. So essentially, yeah, like that's a great, that's a great, uh, way to look at it, right? When you go to Google Street View and you can like go in that restaurant, right? What they have is a system, uh, one on ones that's pretty mainstream. It's called Matterport. It's like a 360 camera. You set it and it does like circles throughout the space. You can kind of hop from point to point to look at it. That's exactly what we do. Before the building's built, right? So we're generating and creating all those virtual elements, everything you see on the table, settings, on the walls, the floors, that's all modeled in a virtual world. One of the things I always tell people, because again, part of my job when I'm talking to clients or new, you know, new potential clients, I, I'm educating them 'cause it, you know, this is, this concept's still new to people. They still don't realize that a lot of the images we see around us might not be real or might not have. Been, been made. One of, one of the realities is, uh, everyone knows Ikea and ikea's a massive, you know, company at this point globally, but if you open up an IKEA magazine, you're flipping through, you're like, oh my God, that kitchen looks beautiful. Look at those bathrooms, look at this. All those images are not real. They are photo, they were made in the virtual world and then put out there like they're done. So that's always why you, like, you can never get your bathroom or kitchen to look as good as that rendering. 'cause it's like. Know, it's, it's almost perfect. Like it's the perfect layout. And that's, that's, uh, that's what my team here at Design Ones gets to do. We get to create beautiful things that look real.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm gonna throw you a curve ball. Yep. There's this idea that at some point we will be able to upload our brains digitally and not need a body. Or if you're about to die, you can upload yourself and you could live forever in the cloud.

Brian Corcodilos: Mm-hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: Do you want to be the one building the buildings that they're gonna live in?

Brian Corcodilos: You know, I sometimes joke to my architects and interior designers, I say. How much longer do we actually have to do this for? And you know what I mean by that? You know, I, at a certain point, the overlap of the virtual world, right? Whether it's we're living in ether, we're, we're moving beyond ourselves or in the present day, that building environment is gonna be very basic. What's gonna actually become more complex is that virtual overlay or, you know, people might note as like augmented reality around us. Right. That's where I think things are about to get very interesting, right? I, oh, snap my finger. Let's make it look like Hanukkah celebration today. Oh, and my friends who are Christian, they're coming over. We're gonna make this room look like it was decorated for Christmas. There's the tree over in the corner, but in reality. It's a blank space. And I think that that technology is coming and there's people that are actively moving. You know, you see the biggest brands in the world like Apple. Right. You know, and, and Meta this week just announced, you know, some, something they're dropping with Oakley coming up here shortly. Right. So, you know, there's, I. Those companies are working towards it. I'm not trying to create that stuff. I'm just trying to become the Angry Birds app that implements the technology between the built world and the virtual world. And do do that better than anybody else. 'cause how we're moving, right? You're not just gonna be able to hire an architect to do your buildings much longer. You, you know, they're gonna have to draw it up and do basics, but like that building's only as good as what the virtual world is doing to it and around it. And I think that's a scary thing for some people to realize. But. It's coming at a rapid pace. And like even when Apple dropped their first headset, I got, I must have got like 30, 40 text messages. Like, Brian, how'd, you know? Like it's augmented thing. It was coming. I was like, it's not that I, I knew it was coming. It's 'cause of just how the world's moving, right? We have a whole virtual world that people are living in and we have the physical world around it. It's only a matter of time till those two things start truly intersecting. And you know, right now the intersection is our cell phones, right? This is the virtual world all around us every day. Wait till this is, we don't need this. And that's, that's the interesting part that I'm excited to, to be part of and shake up a little bit.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I know. That's what Meta and Apple have been working on is what's after smartphones. And they've tried these sunglasses, they've tried these headsets. I remember back in 2020 when my company was working on a enterprise collaboration system that was meant to rival Slack. And we were looking at VR and AR headsets, we were thinking about, you know, what if the future of collaboration is virtual and how can we build something right now that works for that? And it was especially important to us in that moment because COVID was had just started and we had built a deck. For our next round around the idea of building for VR and building for ai, and this was years before Chatt BT was released, so we were thinking we would have to raise a hundred million dollars just to be able to do these two things, and that that was the, that was the foundational step to do these things, and that it would be hundreds of millions or billions of dollars more just to be able to make it something that would work. And luckily for me, the company failed, so I don't have to go and actually execute that. But it was before the public was ready for it.

Brian Corcodilos: And it's not even that, right? Like of course it failed. And, and the reason why is 'cause the biggest companies in the world are, you're going up against, you're going up against billions of dollars in cash reserves. It's hard to mess up when you have billions of dollars in cash reserves. It really is. So, you know, the, there's people and I, and you saw it in a brief stint during the, the whole crypto boom, the NFTs where people were creating these metaverses that we're gonna live within, right, right. Like the Cland Ford Ape Yacht Club. Right. The, you know, all these companies that got a lot of money to do it. They just, they didn't get enough. 'cause they, I think you're gonna see it from, you know, one of three companies are gonna figure it out. I, I predict it's either Apple, Google, or OpenAI. One of those companies is gonna get it right. And you know, I have my money on Zucks. 'cause you don't bet against, you always bet for the jockey, right? Who's the jockey? It's gonna win. I I think Zucks gonna figure it out. 'cause I think he has the mass adoption of the social network. His me, quest three is super successful. If you haven't put on a me Quest three, you're missing out. Just fun. Like, literally just fun. And you know, if you put on a me Quest three compared to Apple's ridiculously overpriced headset, you're like, why would I pay for this when I have this option in front of me? Zucks still very far

Sean Weisbrot: ahead. They're designed differently. So I, I bought a me quest. I, I bought one of them. In 2020. 'cause I was like, yeah, we need to figure this out. I need to try this thing. Greg's, how am I supposed like just right, right now what I'm doing with ai, with using all these different tools and using them in my business, how am I supposed to understand how to utilize this tool for a segment of customers if I don't know how it works? And so I bought it and I was using it and I, you know, I used it. I burned through the battery at least once or twice a day 'cause the batteries are awful. But what I learned in the process of trying to be productive with a VR headset was that, screw it, let's play games. And, and I realized actually I was wrong. Humans are never gonna use VR to collaborate like that. Maybe they'll use ar, but if you've got a VR headset on for hours, it hurts your neck and you're cut off from your reality. So. How are you supposed to get anything done? The degrees of free of of, or the angle was it? Degrees of freedom in the eyes is not high enough and they're not strong. It was only like 10 80 p. Now it's like, I think 2K, but the worst problem being the battery is only 60 to 75 minutes. The thing weighs like half a pound.

Brian Corcodilos: To that point, Sean, one of the things we've seen with clients, and again, right, they always say the technology's there, then it's like when you gotta predict when the actual mass adoption occurs, right? The technology is there. But what what's interesting is, you know, like I. I actually don't think the adoption happens. I think the people that are gonna adopt it right now, unfortunately are 12 to 16 years old. I came from a video game background, right? Like I used to play professionally when it wasn't cool, and I was the nerd. Right Now today, kids are, you know, have pink hair and are playing, you know, making millions of dollars. Like I, like I refer to Ninja, right? The guy that's like the Fortnite master makes millions of dollars a year playing video games. Amazing. Great for him. I was born a too early. Those kids are gonna be the ones that can put on a headset and not get motion sickness. Like my 58-year-old client that's building their new dream home, right? So like I put my, my client in there that didn't grow up playing video games, saw it was cool, maybe their kids play, right? But they put on a headset, they get sick, they get motion sickness. So like, they're never gonna put it on even for anything, like, ever. Like, they'll never touch it for the next 40 years of their lives. So the difference is, I, I think we have to predict who's gonna be in this environment and, and what those devices are gonna be. I think it has something to do with wearables for, for a, a time being. I think to me, the Oakley and meta collaboration is probably the best. The only other one that's out there that has a shot at it that's in the built world already doing it, is Leapfrog, where they essentially have a device that you can be on site through the augmented reality glass environment. You can see components of buildings existing, so you can see if you're drawings or matching up to what's going on in the field. That's a cool piece of tech. My my fear is like it doesn't have enough. Computing power behind it to do what's needed to make rooms look real around you. And I think Meta Oakley and Google have, and, and Apple have, you know, the resources to, to blow past leapfrog. Or maybe they'll just buy them at a certain point, someone will own them. But those are really the only companies doing it at the highest levels right now. Highest that I've seen.

Sean Weisbrot: The thing for me about Meta is. The graphics are so childish. They're like Nintendo. Mm-hmm. Graphics and I, I've loved Nintendo my whole life, but I stopped using a switch because I bought a PS five because the graphics are mature and realistic, which is what I want. So I will play with my medi quest, but I won't live in it, and I won't work in it. Mm-hmm. And if it became more realistic, like if they were to start showing things that were unreal, five plus. Mm-hmm. Version, quality of, of graphics, I might reconsider it, but at least for now, there's no value in it for me other than, uh, beat Saber in any golf.

Brian Corcodilos: You have to, it's, it's gonna come. And that's, that's what's excited for me. You know, I, I definitely, um, know that day will come, those companies will get more and more real. Right? Like I, I equate it back to the cell phone, right? We grew up in that age, right? Like the first cell phone was like, oh my God, you can play this game called Snake on it. It's like, yeah, right. Like we all did that, right? And you just see what it is today, you could literally run your company from your cell phone. On the same thing that you used to play Snake on, right? So I think that headsets will get there. What's gonna predict that and how fast that comes. You gotta be watching what NVIDIA's doing and that's, that's, you know, who creates, you know, one of the things I get asked all the time is like, what is Nvidia? Why, why are they so valuable? Brian, why were you, you know, Brian, why were you buying stock of Nvidia years ago? I, I would say, 'cause I have racks of Nvidia graphics cards in my closets here, right? For, that's what creates that virtual world and those chips and that processing speed of. Uh, the GPUs, like you have to watch what NVIDIA's doing and their technology and how rapidly things are shrinking, but also as it shrinks, like what's the percent extra power that's able to come behind it. So it's kind of like you have these other companies out there, but they're using NVIDIA products to make their devices too. You know, some of 'em should, like Apple tries to create their own 30. It's, they should be working with Nvidia at the highest levels to figure it out, right. You want to, you want to keep an eye on a company like Nvidia 'cause they're light years ahead from any of the other ones. So as their chips progress, that's gonna progress the virtual world around us.

Sean Weisbrot: I think adoption's gonna come when you can compute with contacts in your eyes. When you don't need sunglasses, you don't need a VR headset. All of that power is packed into something that you put on top of your eye.

Brian Corcodilos: My, my fear with that, Sean, and, and I, trust me, I've thought about that too. The quick in and out of reality for me. Just I don't think that mass adoption we're gonna see in our lifetime for context glasses. Absolutely. I think glasses, oh my God, I won't take them off. Right. But contacts like, oh my God, I don't like what I'm seeing someone who's wearing 'em right now. Right? Like, uh, let me get this outta my eye. I don't think contacts are what we're gonna see in our lifetime. I think that's a 40, 50 year adoption. Maybe we will. I, I, I'm gonna make it to 85. I hope, you know, I think that adoption is. Y decades and decades away. I think you're gonna see a wearable glasses, right? What's, you know, we haven't really progressed past contacts on our vision in a very long time. So, and most people can't even put them in their eyes. I just think it's gonna be an intersection of glasses with like what open APIs working on with the whole, you know, brain shift like that. That's what's gonna be the standard for 20 years from today.

Sean Weisbrot: I want to go back to. Something you mentioned earlier, which was that you're, you said, my team doesn't really let me do design anymore, and I felt like I heard a little bit of sadness in that remark.

Brian Corcodilos: It is not sadness. I, I love what I do. I love coming to office every Monday, right? Like there's no shortage of sadness in my life. And anytime there is, it's for what moments I try to try to get back on the positive and optimism side. But look, the reality is when you grow a team and, and you move past yourself, right? That changes. Um, you know, I, I am the best visionary in the organization and. When I am in that role, the organization moves forward, things happen, dots connected years ahead, and it sets us up for success month after month when I have to get dragged into the, uh, quote unquote trenches. Don't get me wrong, I love Vince being in some of the trenches. I love going over to my vis team and seeing the cool stuff they're creating virtually and spinning around and like gaming type environments in, in the computer. I love going on my architects, interior designers, seeing what cool stuff they're coming up with and you know, watching all that happen. But if I had to worry about the color of brick or what carpet was going into that rendering, et cetera, nothing would ever get done. I. I think that's as an entrepreneur and you've learned it, right, like that's, that's the escape that you truly have to get to as an entrepreneur. You have to be able to go hands off and build and empower a team around you to scale. It's rare that someone built anything of substance by themselves. I. There's that saying, you gotta, you know, to go far, you want to go, go alone, you wanna go far, go together or something, right? Like you need a team to empower you to go far. And, and I think that's something entrepreneurs sometimes never figure out. They say they're an entrepreneur, that's great, but you gotta have meaning behind what you're doing and truly do that is to build a team and watch that team grow along with your product and your services.

Sean Weisbrot: What if you built a team of agents that had no, they weren't human.

Brian Corcodilos: That's what I'm excited for in combining both. I'm excited for what's about to come and I, and I, it's crazy. I will predict it. Within 12 months here, most operators and, and entrepreneurs will have virtual agents all around them doing menial tasks. Can you book me meetings with the last top 10 clients in my CRM over the next 10 weeks? Boom. Done. It's gonna happen, right? Think of it like, right? I wanna make sure I buy a Mother's Day, father's Day. My cousins all their birthdays, order all their stuff. They like sports, they like the Philly sports teams. Go, boom. Done. You know, does deep research, comes back in 15 minutes, Brian, this is what I'm thinking. Da da, da. Is this good? Yep. Chick put it on my Amex to. That is gonna happen rapidly. If you're an executive assistant, don't be worried. Just know that these tools should help you excel the people you're working for. But within 12 months, everyone's gonna have their own executive assistant at the highest levels, and that's, that's gonna be very, very interesting to see how that frees up some entrepreneurs that can't get outta their own way.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I've been exploring how I can build agents for myself. Mostly in the realm of executive functions, especially around the scheduling and publishing and managing of the different aspects of the podcast because mm-hmm If I do an episode of, you know, recording every day, then I have to pull the files off and put 'em on my cloud and then give the link to my editor, and then when the editor finishes it, I've gotta go and. Create a, a video description and a thumbnail concept and titles, which, you know, I do with chat bt. And then I have to create the thumbnail, but I also have to get a thumbnail from the editor so I can ab test with an AI versus a human to see which ones the people wanna have more. And then I have to toss that into transcript and I have to put it into the audio hosting platform. So I have to get the MP three out first. So there's like a lot of things that go into the actual management of a podcast, and I'm doing like 15 to 20 of these a month.

Brian Corcodilos: I just wanna say that's a great clip to show people how to get a hundred thousand subscribers to their podcast. 'cause that is work. Most people do not work that hard on their podcast, and that's, that's impressive number one. But to your point, that will all be automated here within the next 12 to 24 months. You have my word. It is happening. But what people are like, everyone, I feel like at this point is open chat, GPT. Right? And they're. You know, I, I don't even use Google search anymore. Right? I use chat GPT as a baseline. If I gotta dive into Google, it's 'cause I'm, I know what I'm trying to get to. Like, I, I know the name of the company, but I don't know how to spell it. That's, that's what I'm going to Google. And I'm finding it that way. Right. But what's gonna be interesting with these agents that you're talking about. They're gonna go off and do things. They're not gonna give you an answer in 10 seconds like you're getting it now in chat, GBT, they're gonna be like, okay, Sean, okay Brian, thank you for this information. Here's some que I have these questions. Great. You're gonna give it to 'em. They'll be like, okay, I'll be back in 30 minutes. And they're gonna go out and do deep, deep research. Like what they it does in 10 seconds is amazing. Imagine what it'll do in 30 minutes. It'll go find every competitor globally. It'll go find every Phillies paraphernalia you can buy, right? Like whatever you want. It'll find it at the highest levels and use other research to inform why that's the best decision, and that's, that's gonna truly change the way people run their businesses. It's, it's happening at the highest levels. Where I get nerdy about it is in my profession with like the architectural side. You know, there's 29,000 jurisdictions across the United States, or even more than that. They all have their own nuances of code zoning regulations. It's like, how do we consume that information and then put it in meaningful ways to, to progress drawing sets and make buildings safe? That's where I get excited 'cause all right, if I'm about to go into the Atlanta marketplace. I can have my AI agent, or I'm gonna call it my, my zoning and permit agent, go out and do massive research across the zoning and building codes in Atlanta compared to the what we're currently doing in Philadelphia. Know the differences and provide that data to my team so we don't make mistakes and we can make our buildings safe and reduce change orders in the field. Because we might have missed a A code that's only specific to Atlanta, not in Philadelphia. And now that's a change order and I lose a client. But that's gonna be a real life example In 12 months, how we'll be utilizing AI in our business.