<p>Cheers, you said </p>
<p>“My advice is specific. It is geared toward students (especially women) who want to pursue a satisfying, high design career with good lifestyle flexibility and good income.”</p>
<p>so your advice for female architects is to open up a firm as early as possible?</p>
<p>“la…you may or may not discover why the practice of architecture doesn’t light your fire”</p>
<p>I have… part of it is that I’m really GOOD at technical stuff, but don’t enjoy it. Architecture <em>seemed</em> like it would be a good place for someone with a balanced creative/technical mind (me), but this is actually not the case. It is actually much easier for someone who is more only one or the other, because then their role in the process is clear both to them and to their employers. Because I have the capacity to develop a great amount of technical knowledge and skill very quickly, I get assigned so many technical tasks that I don’t have time to design. I don’t attribute this to my sex because I see other women in the opposite situation- getting design opportunities because of their lack of technical skills (which, btw, really burns me up- they’re getting an opportunity because of what they CAN’T do instead of what they CAN do?!), and this situation has been more common in my experience. This is a battle that I would have to fight my whole career in architecture, wanting to do design and having a lot of talent, but the moment some urgent shop drawings come in or we’re having a problem with our structural engineer, guess who ends up working on it, because numerically there is simply a greater demand for technical personell. The number of hours in a day prevents me from doing an equal amount of design work. I also don’t enjoy the centralization of design, as opposed to graphics where it’s common to see several top designers have total or almost total control of their work in the same firm, because the projects are smaller and more manageable by a single person or a smaller team. Which leads me to the other reason… short attention span! I go CRAZY when I’m on the same project for 8 months on end, and don’t even want to know what would happen if I were expected to stay on one for five years, as is common with the larger projects which I find programatically more exciting. I <em>hope</em> that’s not a female problem, I’d like to think that my fellow women have a better capacity for long-term projects than I do, but I would defer to any sort of research that is out there on that one. Anyway, enough of my rambling, but I felt it was very important to learn what it was that was wrong with architecture for me before I chose what to move on to, because I feared making another bad choice if I didn’t take the time to figure out what I didn’t want in a career.</p>
<p>Sorry to the architecture kidlets for the detour here, but hopefully it can help you learn something about architecture- lots of people leave the field for a great variety of reasons. Don’t worry about it, find what makes you happy, if you get in there and don’t feel like it’s the right thing for you, you’re not proving anything to anybody by staying with a field that isn’t right for you. But hopefully, it will be. = )</p>
<p>First of all, you are correct, the best design positions are as rare as hen’s teeth in any firm. But danggit, la–if you are leaving the profession because you are not getting opportunities to design or learn about the design process–then you are precisely the prototypical female I’m talking about!! </p>
<p>Your experience is common to many female architects. They are assigned to what I call ‘admin’ tasks because women tend to be much better at organization (or not as clever about hiding that ability. Men are better at appearing dense when it comes to mundane tasks; ie a version of the game called “Honey!!?? Have you seen my _____???”).</p>
<p>I’d love to know if the female designers are working on projects that are ‘on par’ with the male designers–or if there are any lead female designers at your firm.</p>
<p>You might not believe me but you are misinformed about the lopsidedness. A good architect needs to have technical skills and creative ability in balance–especially a female architect who is expected to be twice as knowledgeable.</p>
<p>The first two decades of your own practice are taken up by the twin tasks of developing a highly fascile knowledge of construction (space and materials) and and increasingly daring manipulation of form, light and volume. </p>
<p>Why didn’t you try to open your own firm? You sound like you are more than ready to handle the design and construction of small projects. Have you tried telling everyone you are looking for your own projects?</p>
<p>You seem to be looking for that high design buzz–similar to the buzz you had in architecture school. I think the only place you are going to find that buzz is in your own firm–graphic or architecture.</p>
<p>It is advisable for architects to open up their own firms as soon as possible–but it is especially advisable for women who need to be their own bosses to:</p>
<p>a) Get opportunities to design
b) Have enough flexibility to raise a couple of children properly</p>
<p>Cheers, let me clear up a couple of things. I do not make 800k. I make a reasonable salary, and I share in the profits of the firm as an owner. Sometimes that is a nice amount, sometimes it has been zero. This is the reality of business ownership.</p>
<p>My fundamental disagreement with your advice is that setting up your career based on how Pritzker prize winners have done it is just not good advice for most folks. This is like giving an average high school basketball player advice on how to have a Hall of Fame career; don’t go to college, go straight to the pros, lead the league in scoring, win a few NBA championships. Even a Parade All American probably has a better shot at getting hit by lightning. Your advice may work if you have Tom Mayne’s talent and drive, but for the average student it is not good advice.</p>
<p>Are there any Pritzker prize winners in architecture/construction firms? No. Are there any in my region? No. Any in Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami? No. If that is the standard for having a meaningful design career, we may as well just put our pencils away because it is not going to happen. </p>
<p>I stick by my advice; work in a good firm, do significant work, get licensed, save money, meet potential clients, then if you have a burning desire go start a firm.</p>
<p>rick</p>
<p>“if you are leaving the profession because you are not getting opportunities to design or learn about the design process”</p>
<p>It’s only one of several reasons. I definitely wouldn’t call it the biggest, because if it weren’t for the other reasons, it’s something that I’d push through. I’d get a new job, play dumb about autocad and claim that shop drawings looked like heiroglyphics to me, and pry my way into design via my LEED accreditation and planning/programming skills. I strongly considered this and certainly have the means to do so, but in the end realized that all of the other things I’m not happy with would still be there, so it was time for a bigger change.</p>
<p>Well, la, I think it’s a loss to the profession. You’re articulate and strong minded. Never thought about your own firm? If I was a client, I’d hire you in a heartbeat–and I’ve never seen your work!</p>
<p>rick…you are welcome to disagree but I know lots of successful architects who started with nothing when they were 25 to 30. Lots. In Manhattan and Los Angeles and St Louis and Chicago and San Francisco and Honolulu and Singapore and Hong Kong and Shanghai and Sydney and so on and so on.</p>
<p>My plan is not just for Pritzker Prize winners. It is a good plan to follow if you want to concentrate on high design. Full stop.</p>
<p>I started my firm with one project at age 28 turning 29. I never made zero money. Hah! Perish the thgouht! Never. I made a decent profit every year for the past 21 years–at least 50% above the salary I would have made at a firm–usually much much more.</p>
<p>As Francis Ford Coppola says about starting to make films at 21: "I had a baby to feed–I couldn’t afford not to make good money! "</p>
<p>In opening the last branch office, when my partner had a few grey hairs, the size of our project jumped by a factor of 5 the first year and that level jumped by a factor of 3 last year. $100M projects still seem crazy but a $60M project is in our sights. These projects are starting to line up on a runway. </p>
<p>The fees are astronomical. Our staff is minimal and I plan to keep it that way.</p>
<p>If this keeps up, we will certainly have a shot a Pritzker-type work–museums and institutional work–what I call the Ronchamp phase of a career. It’s heading our way if we keep up our momentum. We have some unbelievable clients–hands-off guys who are also making a bloody fortune with minimal staff levels.</p>
<p>Instead of automatically poo-poohing what the girl has to say, consider this: I managed to get through my twenties, thirties and forties with a great, mostly 8:30 to 5:30 pm lifestyle plus six weeks annual paid vacation plus one or two trips overseas every year plus private schools for my sons. I was able to carry a $3200 per month mortgage throughout my thirties and forties and made a nice chunk of money flipping a couple of pieces of real estate.</p>
<p>There are lots of ways to slice up a career–yours worked for you but it would have stifled me–and most women. I’ve had a great career which has spanned the globe and it is still popping. </p>
<p>I am only too happy to recommend this type of career to any gutsy young architect.</p>
<p>I didn’t say I haven’t struggled, I said I have made a profit and a good salary every year of the twenty one years I’ve had my own practice. I have opened offices and branch offices in three cities, on two continents, each office more successful than the last. I have that aspect sussed. I deliberately stay under the radar–I dont’ have a website and you wouldn’t find my name if you Googled it–partly because my one brush with fame (for a venture I started outside of archtiecture) happened in 1992.</p>
<p>The hiring partners of the Manhattan firms were upset that I left after brief apprenticeships. One did kick the wall when I went to work for the other. The other gave me a six week paid vacation with airfare to Europe to get me to stay four months beyond my departure date. I awarded myself a Rome Prize after that apprenticeship and we spent several months in Rome. Back in Manhattan, I tried working for another architect but couldn’t do it with a small baby. A friend recommended us for our first built project and we made the jump and never looked back.</p>
<p>I’m not playing that name game. I don’t play the fame game–I think it damages my ability to work with a clear mind. On CC, I have too much consideration for my boys to post too much. I never want them to hear about my CC posts from their peers. They would hate that–and I would too. College is their experience–not mine. </p>
<p>Have you heard the expression, live and let live rick?</p>
<p>Rick, on the first page of these posts, you said
“If you want real money take the MBA and go work for a developer.”
can you specify on that more?
thanks</p>
<p>also, how can you become a developer?</p>
<p>[edited out to remove ad hominem comments - Mod JEM]</p>
<p>rachellie, developers are the folks who put together land, tenants and financing to build most of the commercial structures you see. Generally you have two kinds of folks in these organizatiions; the dealmakers and the project managers who get them built once the deal is signed. Most architects who join developers become project managers because of the technical skills they bring. You will make more money than a typical architect, but less than say a firm owner. The dealmakers come from a finance or broker background, and their greatest asset is the ability to sell, and a willingness to take risk. These are the guys that make the serious money. </p>
<p>I worked with a developer in Chicago, and we were building a 1.4 million s.f. spec (no tenants) tower in downtown Chicago. When he got out of college he was selling Fuller brushes door to door in his hometown in Wisconsin. A buddy who was a broker told him he needed to come to Chicago, because if you can sell Fuller brushes you can lease space. His friend was right. </p>
<p>An MBA or finance degree will open doors, but after that it is up to you. It is a tough profession, but the rewards can be huge.</p>
<p>rick</p>
<p>If by aggressive you mean frequent, it’s true. I try to post frequently on this thread to keep up the interest and the post count. In four years of posting, neither boy has been confronted by my posts. My CC friends know me well --some IRL. My CC friends have been invaluable in their advice regarding my son’s academic pursuits (non-architectural).</p>
<p>I post frequently because I wonder if something like this forum could be a better agent for institutional change. It’s possible that some sexist aspects of the profession could be changed via wider discussion on the internet–between the generations. I’m hoping some of the female students get to school and question why the majority of student publications are devoted to male work, why the school lecture series is mostly populated by male architects etc etc.</p>
<p>Hopefully, my advice will assist other young students get into lead design positions and practice ownership–esp female architects. Time will tell. The kids will have to get back to me and let me know.</p>
<p>Folks, this thread has gotten off-topic and catty. Please bear in mind the following from the Terms of Service:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>By the way, the reference to “e-mail” in the last sentence should read “PM.”
Thanks,
Mod JEM</p>
<p>I’ll let you PM the mods to find out why those posts were deleted by mods, la…but I will clarify my position about CAD skills–and ‘luck’.</p>
<p>I was lucky but only becuase I put myself in the position to be lucky. I’ve had a very unusual career because I’ve made up some of my own rules along the way. </p>
<p>Now that I am twenty five years into it, I don’t think my success was such an accident. This fun career didn’t land at my feet due to fame or anything resembling fame. My gut feeling is that I’m not so special. If I can do it–so can a whole lot of other architects. It’s not nano-science. In my opinion. Some people may have differing opinions, obviously.</p>
<p>Regarding CAD. When I hire young interns, I need, have to have, phenomenal CAD skills*. I worked for a two man firm for a year when I was very very young and I learned my exquisite drafting skills from them. They had been in business for a year. They were, you guessed it, 27 and 28 at the time. Anyway, those drafting skills got me in the door and slightly up the ladder at all the subsequent offices I worked in–including the two famous New York offices.</p>
<p>FWIW, that early experience was a terrific business experience too–because I saw how those two young guys started up their firm. I saw how much cash they made and how they controlled expenses. Believe it or not, we were doing small mall-based luggage shops when one of the largest department stores in the country literally walked into the teeny tiny basement office and gave them a $30M department store job. For a three person office–(the third person, yours truly, was making a whopping $3 an hour and thrilled to get it, LOL). Later that year, an East Coast shopping mall developer gave them a $80M mall–which the three of us produced in six months. In any event, I absorbed the financial lessons of ‘lean and mean’ and I’ve never forgotten them.</p>
<p>They got that job because one of guys had been a designer at a larger firm and the department store design team had taken a liking to him during a previous project. I went back to that firm when I finished school but an influential ‘famous’ friend came in, saw the nice but slightly pedestrian design quality and told me that I was wasting my time and needed to do internships in the top offices. (Not unlike Rouse telling Gehry he should stop doing Rouse malls).</p>
<p>I had no idea how important those top office internships were–until I opened up my own office(s). Those ‘brand name’ internships still bring work into our office, twenty two years after the fact. It’s crazy. I could have never guessed that at the time.</p>
<p>Notes
*With a huge new project released for initial design, I’ve been thinking about switching to Catia/DP. Our modelmaker is a Catia guru and I think I see the future of the profession–and my career. In the next year, I hope to be looking for young architects/3D draughtsmen with phenomenal Catia or 3D experience. Fingers crossed, by the end of the year, 2D CAD documents will be a by-product in my office, only.</p>
<p>Cheers- do you think that the entire architectural field will soon switch to 3D model based programs, just like the field has been or did switch to computer drafting. Do you know any other architects that are making the same type of switches you are?- </p>
<p>Also-- how did you get your first job when you opened your own firm-- was it directly from your internships or was it due to the names of the offices you had worked in- or neither or almost random- or by connections (friends). How many years after finishing school did you intern and then work before you went out on your own? Also what are the primary job/jobs of an intern- is it mostly paper/”draft this up” work- what are you trying to pick up/ what did you pick up? How much did the places where you interned affect your ideas?</p>
<p>No, I doubt the entire profession will switch anytime soon–Catia is too expensive for the average firm, ten times the cost of AutoCAD. I won’t be able to do it until this big project is released for contract documents.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if high end firms will switch or not–I’m not that plugged into the community to know. Ask rick or Marsden? I can tell you that my big firm engineers are feeling slightly nauseous about the idea–but the contractor–who already uses Pro-Steel–is stoked. Talking to the distributor for my area, I get the feeling I would be leading the charge–following Gehry and Mayne and others of course. From my perspective, the advantages are unbelieveable–but I will let you know if and when we do implement it and what the result is on the actual building process. </p>
<p>I opened my first office in Manhattan with a big additoin to a country house in Duchess County–a job I got after I told an influential friend that I was looking for projects.</p>
<p>I opened my second office after a family friend of my former sister-in-law (a woman who acted as our first realtor) recommended us for a large single family house. We also did a small commercial project for that family (and the woman became our second realtor). We focused on high end residential to give us the opportunity to work with substantial materials and high design. In doing this, believe it or not, I deliberately imitated the career of Corbusier and the New York five + Gehry. I did extensive research on all of them while at school. Corbusier and Gehry have had remarkably similar careers–in my opinion. Since I graduated, I wanted to get to the Ronchamp part of my career–and I admire Gehry’s success at getting to that point. Who knows if I will get there. It kind of feels like I have a shot at it–if everything continues along this path. There are a ton of variables but it appears that I have accumulated the skills and the clients?? We’ll see.</p>
<p>I’m not going to reveal how I opened my third office for privacy reasons related to my boys–but basically, I told a complete stranger, a young clerk, that I was looking for work for my new firm. My expectations were pretty darn low. I was thinking: kitchen additions here we come.</p>
<p>Instead, he introduced us to a colleague who had a number of clients who were interested in becoming developers. Three weeks later, one of those developers gave us a $2M commercial project. In a town where we literally knew no one. We went on to do several other projects for that client.</p>
<p>Never would have happened without that brand name internship–and grey hair perhaps?? LOL.</p>
<p>That $2M project had a number of tenants and we did some of their fit-outs. One of them happened to be a guy who represented a keen out-of-town developer. Before we knew it, we were designing $10M projects for that developer, one of which is under construction. We have managed to control the building costs and he has hired us to do a couple of much bigger projects. In the meantime, we have had lots of other projects roll in the office. We continue to tell everyone, and I mean everyone, that we are looking for work.</p>
<p>For most firms, getting Catia is like buying a Ferrari and then driving on 35mph roads with it… overkill for their needs. A lot of firms are switching to the lower end parametric software though: ArchiCAD, Revit, or even just trying to make fuller use of Architectural Desktop. They’re finally seeing what a waste of time it is to have one person doing construction documents and another person doing presentation modeling, and one is always trying desperately to keep up with the other, one is always just a little behind the design. </p>
<p>I will have to agree about the brand name internship thing… if I hear my boss mention his time with I.M. Pei one more time, I think I’m going to scream!</p>
<p>If mentioning to a clerk that you didn’t even know that you were looking for work and getting a $2m job out of it isn’t luck, then I don’t know what is!</p>
<p>That is part luck–but who would have thought to ask the clerk in the first place? I have had great luck–but always following an effort to put myself out there. My partner is king of the cold call.</p>
<p>From my perspective, wanting to do some free form bits on bigger projects, I think Catia will help me get those bits specified to the nth degree so that I can get the bits manufactured and installed at a reasonable cost. I also find AutoCAD and revit frustrating and inefficient–because they approach 3D from a mechanical drafting base. The system needs too many bandaid moves to be truly fluid. Those bandaids cost me money. Grrrrr.</p>
<p>All the clever manufacturers went to Catia fifteen years ago and those that didn’t are getting killed in the cross global markets. I look at my models and think why shouldn’t I be thinking about this tower like any other manufactured product–with this bit from China and that bit from Thailand? Manufacturers spread the cost of Catia by sharing the licenses all over the place. We might spread that cost among the engineers, our office and the builder–especially in the first year or two when we won’t need our seats 12 months of the year.</p>
<p>Partly I am influenced by my 18 year old–who learned five new program languages in the last three months. He’s updated his website with the latest movie animation software. (He doesn’t have that anti-fame thing. He’s got a website and he has already been an invited speaker at an educational conference). He has an intuitive, fearless feel for cyber-everything–and he’s not a CS geek–he will be an IR major. He’s just young, keen and part of the cyber revolution. </p>
<p>My gut tells me that there will be many young architects coming up with that intuitive feel–kids like Tzar or sashimi or vyan. My gut also tells me that this could be the way to get to Ronchamp. I’ll take the risk and see what happens.</p>
<p>I tell you what–Catia is going to be a big aphrodisiac for clients. Clients will think Catia is bringing sexy back. Says me.</p>
<p>didn’t mean to imply that it’s not a cool tool, but rather a perspective on why most firms won’t be heading in that direction. They can’t justify the expense of it, because what they’re building is so boxy that it can be modeled and documented with ease by a much lower end program.</p>
<p>yeah, most schools today put a heavy emphasis on computer software…though i know at my school, they discourage you from using computer applications until 2nd year (the logic behind that is they feel that software can limit the way you make things like sketchup etc). cornell is heavily oriented into making things with your hands and drawing but there are some studios that lean onto algorithmic architecture. </p>
<p>i’d say knowing as many software applications early on is useful if you want to find internships especially if you know autocad, illustrator, photoshop, and sketchup during your first year. a lot of colleges (like mine) DONT teach autocad (they expect you to learn it yourself)…so it’s good to know it beforehand.</p>
<p>for weeks, i have contemplated whether I should continue to be an architect
but reading cc posts has reassured that this will suit me better than i thought. I guess partly the reason why i wanted to change was “driven by money”, but tonight I read something that I’m going to live with forever</p>
<p>“do what you love and money will come”</p>
<p>not only that, but I was always good with art and throwing my innate quality is like throwing away my legs.</p>
<p>so coming back to the subject, I just hope I won’t end up doing remodels. My goal is to aim for high end residential work. ECOHOUSES is the future!</p>