Nick Karakaian on Columbus Brick by Brick

The Arcfluence Podcast — Out and About

Most of the time, the Arcfluence Podcast brings Columbus operators into the room. Occasionally, the room is somewhere else. Nick Karakaian recently sat down with John Styer for an episode of Columbus Brick by Brick — Styer’s show on the people, projects, and ideas shaping the city. The conversation returned to a central Arcfluence theme: architecture as a financial instrument, not a line item.

From Striping Parking Lots to Owning a Firm

Nick’s path to running an architecture firm did not run through an architecture firm. It ran through a parking-lot striping crew, a drywall hammer, a stint in the Air Force, a master’s degree in architecture, a real estate license, a contractor’s license, a handyman business in Queens, a basement Airbnb, and an RV trip across the country that ended in a fourplex offer in Grandview. The leap into a firm came after most of that was already in place.

The non-linearity matters. By the time Arcfluence opened, Nick had already underwritten short-term rentals as the host, framed walls as the carpenter, negotiated as the broker, and renovated as the contractor. The firm wasn’t a degree converted into a business card — it was the consolidation of a decade of jobs, each one of which would, eventually, sit somewhere in the firm’s brief.

Architecture as Investment, Not Expense

Styer’s framing of architecture as an investment, not an expense, lands cleanly. It’s the way Nick has been describing the work to clients for years. The thesis isn’t that good design is luxurious — it’s that good design is mechanical. A window placement, a ceiling height, an ADU at the back of the lot — these decisions, fixed early in a drawing, compound across a holding period as rent, resale, or quality of life. The line item for the architect is the line item for fixing them well.

The argument has consequences for how an investor reads a pro forma. Architectural fees show up as expense on the front end and as margin on the back end, but only if the front-end decisions were the right ones. The firm that gets hired for the lowest fee is sometimes the same firm whose drawings cost the project a year in change orders. The cheapest architect on the bid sheet is rarely the cheapest architect across the holding period.

One-Stop Shop vs. The Custom Path

A lot of investors arrive looking for a design-build — one firm, one contract, one number. Nick understands the appeal and steers a different way when the project calls for it. Builders bring catalogs. That’s their efficiency, and it’s the right tool for a starter home or a tight pro forma. For a custom build at a higher dollar value — where the goal is to make the space special, where the cost of getting it wrong is large — the catalog is the wrong starting point.

What you want, in those cases, is a firm that has worked through hundreds of those decisions already and knows which ones move the value and which ones are noise. The catalog is a closed list. A firm with the right history can open it back up — and price the difference.

Designing a Space You Can Age Into

The other thread of the episode is universal design. Nick walks Styer through the contemporary version of the concept, which has moved well past the ADA-checklist reading of it.

Universal design, in Nick’s framing, is a posture: design a space that one occupant can age into and that a different occupant — kid, parent, guest, eventual buyer — can move into without renovation. Done well, the work is invisible. The wider hallway reads as generous, not accommodating. The lighting reads as warm, not compliant. The investment hides itself in the everyday.

The conversation also covers ADUs, common investor mistakes, leadership under pressure, and what Columbus needs to get right as it continues to grow. The full episode is on Brick by Brick.

Listen

Watch or listen to the full conversation on Columbus Brick by Brick, hosted by John Styer of Styer Hospitality Co. Find more from the Arcfluence team at arcfluence.com.