The Clayton Vance Podcast

I’m recording this just a mile from where Leonardo da Vinci died in France. His final words were: “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”In this episode, I reflect on those words—on Leonardo’s pursuit of beauty, truth, and proportion, and how his study of Vitruvius led to the Vitruvian Man, uniting heaven and earth within a circle and square.We’ll look at how those ideas shaped the Renaissance and what they still mean for us today. Because like

In 1666, London burned for four days. Thirteen thousand homes were lost, St. Paul’s Cathedral collapsed, and 80% of the medieval city was reduced to ashes. Out of this devastation came an extraordinary opportunity: the chance to rebuild a city from the ground up. Yet London was not remade in the image of Rome or Paris—it was rebuilt on the bones of its medieval streets, locked in place by property rights and lot lines.In this episode of The Clayton Vance Podcast, we explore how urban design becomes

Clayton grew up in split-levels—the emblem of postwar American housing—and traces how that “efficient” template reshaped our built world. In 1940 the U.S. had ~40 million housing units; by 2020, ~140 million. Most of that growth followed a new ethic: economy, mass production, engineered materials, and “form follows function.” Before 1940, homes were guided by craft, proportion, natural materials, and an embedded language of beauty. This episode explores what was lost in the shift, why so much recent

We’ve been chasing “sustainability” for centuries — from banning butchers in 14th-century London to today’s endless regulations and paper straws. But have we been asking the wrong questions all along?In this episode, Clayton Vance argues that true sustainability isn’t just about insulation, carbon footprints, or solar panels. It’s about building places people actually want to keep. From historic homes that endure, to the grand enemy of sustainability — modern zoning — we explore how beauty,

In this episode of The Clayton Vance Podcast, we trace the automobile’s transformation of architecture and urban life. From tree-lined streets where porches and people took center stage to the rise of front-loaded garages dominating suburban facades, the car forever altered the way we build and live. Clayton explores how carriage houses were tucked away in alleys, why Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House marked a turning point, and how zoning, highways, and the pursuit of convenience rewrote our towns

Roger Jackson has shaped skylines, restored sacred places, and quietly mentored a generation of architects. In this special episode, Clayton sits down with the former president of FFKR Architects—Utah’s largest architectural firm—for a deeply personal and profound conversation about a life in architecture.From childhood memories of blueprint ammonia to the award-winning restoration of the Salt Lake Temple, Roger shares stories from his 40-year career: design philosophy, the evolution of drafting,

Questions shape everything—cities, policies, lives. But what happens when we’re chasing the wrong question, even if we’ve found the right answer?In this premiere episode, architect Clayton Vance dives into a powerful metaphor: the Kudzu effect—how a well-intentioned answer to a crisis in the American South spiraled into ecological disaster. From there, he traces how that same principle explains much of our modern world: soulless suburbs, lifeless freeways, and neighborhoods that feel like