Advice to Young Architects*

* 10/26 - Due to the amount of recent traffic that this post has been receiving, I'm presuming that some third-year architecture student has stumbled upon it and it is making it's rounds through the midnight-oil-burning shanty-town of Design Studio. Yes, I still maintain this view of the profession. And Yes, this is copyrighted. Especially that bit about 'titanium lipstick'.

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A friend of a friend recently asked if he could give my contact info to someone he knew - a young woman in architecture who was leaving NYC and coming to SF. She wanted to make some contacts and get some insider scoop to the black-turtleneck crowd.

I hesitated.

Not because I didn't want to help. I hesitated because although architecture has been a consuming passion of mine for 12 years, I so often find myself at odds with the career. Loving the art and loving the industry are two very distinctly different things.

I went through a design-oriented, accredited architecture program*, and was given oodles of hard-knocks advice. All of it - ALL OF IT - I have found to be painfully, ruefully, true.

And on that note, here are a few of those imparted gems, plus a few of my own, for good measure:

1. If you're in it for the fame/money, GET OUT. You MUST love the profession - LOVE it, because the emotional reward is all you will receive for a good chunk of your career, and even that you will have to dig out with a spoon. Initially, you will be shackled to a drafting table/CAD machine and subside on a miniscule wage, because you can always be replaced by the endless flow of eager new architects.**

2. Of all the architects in the world, only 3% will ever be 'Designers'. The rest will toil over construction details, get lost in the minutia of door and window schedules, lose years of their life pouring over waterproofing membrane specifications. Once you break into that 3%, only 3% of your time will be spent 'designing' - the rest of the time will be spent marketing, presenting/defending, coordinating, and still pouring over waterproofing membrane specifications.

3. Your biggest career decision will be to whom you marry***. Marry well, and you just might unshackle yourself, hang out your shingle, and BE one of the 3%. You'll need to have married well, because in order to get your first independant projects you'll need to give your services away, and in order to make a name for yourself, you'll burn through any fee you do negotiate and then some, thrice over, laboring over every tailored detail. You'll DEFINATELY quarrel with your clients, who will not understand that Beauty equals a massive markup in both materials AND labor. (If you do NOT marry well, the burden of being an inadequate financial provider will emotionally rend you ussunder. Unless, of course, you find someone who shares your Roarke-complex, which is why so many architects end up marrying other architects.)

4. Your head, or your skin, must be THICK. Sometimes, both are necessary. Your designs will be CONSTANTLY under scrutiny - by your clients, by your contractors - and ESPECIALLY by your peers, who not only are constant critics of your design aesthetic, but will challange every aspect - from it's deviation from philosophical ideals to it being a pain in the ass to dissect into draftable, buildable components. And they will be right. But you will have to plow forward, through it.

5. Fashion is NOT style. This goes for buildings, this goes for wardrobes. ONE building that twists and arcs, addressing the function it houses and the contextual fabric within which it is placed, can be seen as style. When it sparks a rash of such, it has induced a fashion, and just as some women should never, ever, wear fashionably low-slung jeans and midriff-baring tunics, architecture should never don titanium lipstick**** just to keep up with the Franks. Er, Joneses. And yet, there's a lot of pressure for them to.

6. Architecture is glorified waitressing. It is a service industry. It is predominately billable-hours, so not unlike that food server, your income stands still when you do. Not unlike that food server, market forces and the whim of the client often determine your profit margin. Not unlike that food server, you have to 'tip out' much of your wage to your consultants, your production staff. Not unlike that food server, your customer service is as much (or more!) important than the product. And too often, you have to stand aside, and watch your gourmet creation get slathered in ketchup.

In a philosophical sense, architecture is a glorious field. It is. In creating shelter, architecture has the potential to move people, to inspire them, to unite them into a community of users who derive an emotional benefit, not just a physical one. It is, like many other arts, a connection of individual pieces which combine to become something much larger than the sum of its parts. And by doing so, connects individual users through a shared experience. When, of course, it's given the chance to.

The art of architecture IS a passion. My passion. But I'm not always sure I want the industry of architecture to be my career.

And I don't think it's that my head isn't thick enough.






* And as my asian mother NEVER fails to point out, I graduated Magna Cum Laude!

** Many famous architects BARELY PAY their staff. I know of one who worked for the famous Mr. G, and had to live in her sister's garage for the year that she did.

*** Unless you are yourself independantly wealthy.

**** This goes for 'turret crowns' and the ilk, as well.