161 episodes
Issued For Construction ID: Jonathan & Garrett Brewer-Sweet - BrewerSweet Co.
2026-10-01 | 1h 46 mins.At eight years old, Jonathan was driving a truck out to the fields with snacks for the crew on his grandparents' 400 acre Idaho farm. Garrett was a Newport Beach kid decorating his bedroom like a beach house inside a craftsman home. Today the married duo run BrewerSweet Co., a full service interior design studio in Southern California with a growing footprint in Park City, Utah.
Jonathan's Twin Falls childhood was pure adventure: bottle feeding calves, raising a litter of 25 puppies, building a tree house from a dying tree, and singing five part harmony on 24 hour road trips with two music teacher parents. Theater, choirs, and competitive ballroom followed, including a week of dance camp with choreographers from So You Think You Can Dance. After Bible college in England, he landed in California with about a thousand dollars, two suitcases, and a borrowed car.
Garrett studied business management, spent a semester in Madrid, worked the overnight shift at Disneyland, and hauled warehouse pallets to LA to turn into a bed frame. He also spent years at the pottery wheel, building a stock of 150 to 200 ceramic pieces that now show up in their projects.
Their first clients were three neighbors in matching condos during COVID. Designer Stephanie Hunt of Flairhunter took them under her wing, and a Park City log cabin remodel became their calling card.
Brewer Sweet Co.
Upcoming Episode:
Giannone Petricone Associates
Sponsors:
Caplan's Appliances
The Doors
To connect with our sponsors, email me: jonathan@issuedforconstruction.ca
Issued For ConstructionIssued For Construction AD - British Columbia Series: David Arnott - Stark Architecture + Interiors
2026-09-28 | 1h 46 mins.David Arnott is the founder and principal of Stark Architecture and Interiors, a 24-person studio based in Squamish, BC. Originally from Peebles, a small town south of Edinburgh, Scotland, he grew up immersed in competitive cycling — his father was a Scottish national road racing champion — before discovering architecture through family trips to churches and buildings across mainland Europe. He completed a seven-year architecture program split between Edinburgh College of Art and KTH in Stockholm (via an Erasmus exchange), where he was introduced to parametric design and generative component modeling.
After graduating in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, David worked for a small residential firm in Edinburgh, then returned to Canada — first working in Vancouver and Whistler — before going independent as a sole proprietor and eventually incorporating Stark Architecture Limited on December 1, 2016. The firm's name means "strong" in Swedish, a nod to his time in Stockholm. Early projects were small renovations in Revelstoke and Whistler; a distinctive red-painted house in Revelstoke helped build word-of-mouth that grew into a steady stream of single-family home commissions.
Stark has built a reputation for technically ambitious, design-forward homes in mountain settings, often on steep or complex sites. The studio is deeply invested in Passive House building science — seven staff hold Passive House certification, and Stark designed North America's first certified Passive House commercial building (a bike shop in Revelstoke). A recent large residential project in Pemberton -fully net-zero, with dual Tesla battery banks and geothermal heating - became Passive House Premium Certified, a first for a Canadian project, along with recognition from Architizer and Canadian Interiors. The firm also won the AIBC Emerging Architect of the Year award.
About four years ago, Stark added interior design as a core discipline, now led by partner Josianne and a six-person team; the studio also does original furniture and lighting/product design. Of Stark's 24 staff, David describes the culture as built around "co-creation" rather than top-down direction, with incredible benefits, balance to the work-life and team trips like cat-skiing and heli-biking.
Outside Stark, David co-runs Alba Distribution with his brother, importing specialty bike components (Formula Forks, EXT, and similar). He lives in Squamish with his wife, Melissa, his two kids and is an enthusiastic mountain biker (I experienced this firsthand) - a throughline from childhood racing in Scotland to the studio's location and culture today.
Stark Architecture + Interiors
Upcoming Episode:
Brewer Sweet Co.
Sponsors:
Caplan's Appliances
The Doors
To connect with our sponsors, email me: jonathan@issuedforconstruction.ca
Issued For Construction- Cynthia Soda is the founder and principal designer of Soda Pop Design, a multidisciplinary interior design and build firm serving mid to high end residential clients across the Greater Toronto Area. Cynthia is NCIDQ certified and registered with ARIDO, and studied interior design at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University).
Cynthia's path to design began early: she grew up watching her father tackle ambitious home projects, including an ICF foundation addition with radiant heated floors, well ahead of when either was common practice. That exposure to construction, paired with a lifelong pull toward design, shaped how she now approaches her work.
Before launching her own firm, Cynthia won the HGTV Canada series Design Interns, a competition hosted by Cecconi Simone's Anna Simone and Elaine Cecconi, and spent a year working at their studio afterward. She started Soda Pop Design in 2012, building the practice project by project through referrals. A few years in, she brought her father on to launch Soda Pop Construction, giving her a way to oversee the build side of her clients' projects alongside her design work rather than handing it off. Design remains the core of her practice, with that added oversight letting her carry projects through from concept to completion. Cynthia has since appeared as an interior designer on HGTV's Holmes Family Rescue, and her work has spanned residential renovations and additions throughout the GTA, along with projects in the US and abroad.
Cynthia's father remains one of her biggest influences, and the creative, problem solving mindset he brought to every project still shapes how she runs her business today. Working alongside him at Soda Pop Construction remains one of the most meaningful chapters of her career, and she continues to honour what he taught her in the way she approaches her work.
Soda Pop Design
Cynthia's Book: Lolly's Basement Crawlies
Upcoming Episode:
Stark Architecture + Interiors
Sponsors:
Caplan's Appliances
The Doors
To connect with our sponsors, email me: jonathan@issuedforconstruction.ca
Issued For Construction Issued For Construction AD - British Columbia Series: David & Susan Scott - Scott & Scott Architects
2026-09-21 | 1h 56 mins.Susan and David Scott are the founders of Scott & Scott Architects, a Vancouver based practice launched in 2012. They met as architecture students at the Technical University of Nova Scotia, later Dalhousie University, completing a Bachelor of Environmental Design and a Master of Architecture in 2000.
Susan grew up in Vancouver's Kitsilano and Dunbar area, camping across British Columbia each summer; her mother is from Cornwall, England. She studied at the University of Victoria before moving into art history, drawn to the mathematics behind Islamic geometric art. A co-op took her to Montreal to work with Avi Friedman at McGill on an affordable housing project. She later spent over a decade at James Cheng Architects and macfarlane/green/biggar, working on projects including Vnukovo Airport in Moscow.
David grew up in a small British Columbia town shaped by a river, a highway and a railway, and spent his teens cross country ski racing. A co-op placed him as a structural inspector at the lead zinc smelter in Trail, BC. He then worked at Peter Cardew Architects as project manager on the Saturna Island House and other projects.
After graduating, the couple built a cabin for David's parents at Lac Le Jeune, then launched their practice with the Alpine Cabin, an off grid snowboard cabin on Vancouver Island that won a 2014 Architizer A+ Award. Restaurant commissions followed, including Torafuku, Kin Kao and Bestie, alongside cabins, houses and a barn across BC, the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and Ontario. In 2016 they received the RAIC Young Architect Award.
Susan runs and gardens; David builds furniture in his workshop. They live in Vancouver with their two daughters.
Scott & Scott Architects
Upcoming Episode:
Soda Pop Design
Sponsors:
Caplan's Appliances
The Doors
To connect with our sponsors, email me: jonathan@issuedforconstruction.ca
Issued For Construction- Tara Fingold is the founder and principal designer of Tara Fingold Interiors (TFI Design Group), a Toronto residential design studio she established in the late 1990s. Tara grew up in the city, the daughter of an English immigrant who built his own contracting business from nothing, and she spent her childhood tagging along on his job sites, absorbing how he managed trades, clients, and a small team he treated like family.
After an undergraduate degree at Western and design and drafting courses at Ryerson and Sheridan, Tara cut her teeth doing store fixturing and visual merchandising for Calvin Klein Canada, traveling the country to set up shops for the brand's major retail accounts. She then apprenticed under a Toronto residential designer, learning the trade from sourcing fabric to hand drafting floor plans, before opening her own studio.
Today, Tara leads a team of designers on projects across Ontario, New York, and Florida, ranging from kitchen renovations to ground-up new builds, including one of the more unusual commissions of her career: a residential mikvah room, built under rabbinic supervision. She now shares an office with her husband, architect Richard Librach, and the two collaborate daily across their practices. Tara has two adult children and has built her business around the same instinct that first drew her to the industry: a deep respect for client relationships and the people who help deliver on them.
Tara Fingold Interiors
Upcoming Episode:
Scott & Scott Architects
Sponsors:
Caplan's Appliances
The Doors
To connect with our sponsors, email me: jonathan@issuedforconstruction.ca
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About Issued For Construction
A long-form podcast hosted by Jonathan Jacobs dedicated to the careers and lives of the individuals shaping the built environment.
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