James Carpenter talks about the progression of his architectural studio and working with clients that take an interest in exploring glass in new ways. Oral history interview with James Carpenter by Barb Elam and Jesse Merandy, September 20, 2018, JCDA Studios, New York, New York. Clip length: 01:24.

James Carpenter: And I think that that whole process of like, I mean how you start with just a pile of sand and what do you do with it. That’s always, that’s still part of what we do here. We’re all, you know, working with casting glass, big castings, and bending glass and chemical strengthening glass—where we work with people all over the world that are specialists in one aspect of that production or another and then, and then it’s a way for us, we bring sort of that knowledge to a project. And originally when I to started the studio it was, I guess it was as much seeking out work with architects whose work I admired and who I thought might take an interest in exploring glass in a slightly different way and sort of introduce myself and try to work with them as a basically a consultant on glass use, and glass structures and stuff like that. And then gradually that morphed into getting commissions from some of those architects to just do parts of the building. And then eventually, you know, some of the clients actually then knew what we did for that project and then they would give us the responsibility to take one more in the next project. So each sort of just morphed into a sort of a practice today which is still consulting a little bit but it’s more doing some art commissions, but also we have clients that come design—that build a whole building, too.