The Survival Guide to Architectural Internship & Career Development

[caption id="attachment_1294" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="The Survival Guide to Architectural Internship and Career Development"][/caption] In 2006, I published a book…or more aptly, Wiley & Sons published a book I had written the year prior.  It is entitled The Survival Guide to Internship and Career Development.  At the time, I was in the throes of establishing our fledgling practice and balancing AIA National committee work with marriage and maintaining friendships back at home…the last thing on my mind was creating more travel opportunities with a book tour.  Nor was I as hip to the social media scene at the time to know how to tweet, blog, or crosspost articles to promote the book.  (Oh if I only knew then what I know now….)

As the economy ramped up into the frenzy we saw just a few years ago, I wondered if the text had lost relevance.  And with the short attention spans spawned by the internet and now the book being almost 6 years old, I questioned if people would feel it relevant enough to purchase.  So I’d gone down a road of complacency about promoting the book. 

Until…Just recently I was approached by AIA San Francisco to kick off their mentorship program, an annual program that is based on a group mentoring model that I initiated in Seattle 8 years ago and have presented at AIA conferences around the country.  It was also a mentoring model I highlighted in my book.  Well, it turns out that San Francisco is not the only chapter that used my model and book to develop mentoring practices for their chapter.  (I'm headed down to San Fran today to do a keynote for their meeting.)

And last month, I received this message via Linked In: 

Grace, We met briefly at an IDP Coordinators conference in Chicago where you were the keynote speaker. For the past 4 years I have run a mandatory IDP Registration course at Wentworth Institute in Boston. We register approximately 160 interns a year and coordinate the course with a cooperative work experience. The rest of the faculty has been trained using NCARB materials and under funding from an NCARB grant I purchased cases of your book to give to faculty as the standard for mentoring. I just wanted to say thank you for the book. Keep Smiling! Charlie

Indeed his email made me smile.  Huh…who knew?  Perhaps I should reconsider my apathy in blogging about the book...so here I am.

As the economy improves for architects (we’ve hit bottom now, haven’t we?) I do believe many of the topics have a renewed relevance…as well as many topics being age-old questions that interns have never known where to seek answers – the premise of the book was to document the “no duh” advice that a seasoned architect could provide…but without the embarrassment of having to ask the “dumb questions.”

And while many architects think, "oh, this book is just for interns"...the irony of writing this book is that it coincided with Mike and I establishing our firm (because that's when you have the most free time, right?).  So the last chapter is actually devoted on how to start a design firm, and it was quite literally written as we were setting up Schemata Workshop.  A pretty useful chapter for the non-intern, mid-career professional who has been laid of during the recession and trying to figure out how to make a go of it on their own.

If you are interested in getting your very own copy of the book you can search on amazon or better yet, follow this link.  http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471692638.html

And if you already have a copy of the book and would like to share your comments, I would love to hear them!

Laddership - a group mentoring model

[caption id="attachment_1290" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Laddership"][/caption] 8 years ago, I started a mentoring group for 5 Seattle-area architectural interns.  It was based on a model of facilitated peer mentoring and professional development – and thusly named by one participant as “Laddership” – in hindsight, a hybrid name from laddered mentoring and leadership.  The group was intentionally comprised of interns at various experience levels – from straight out of school to ready to take their registration exams.  I solicited candidates for the mentor group from the local Young Architects Forum list serve and had an informal application process.  We met monthly rotating responsibilities for selecting location and topics.

Fast forward to present day.  The group has gone through various iterations of participants (with interns rotating off as they moved away, got licensed, or had increased responsibilities at work/home) – the current makeup has been fairly consistent for the past 2-3 years, with one intern having been with me the whole time.  We are less formal now, we don’t worry about selecting a topic – years of familiarity have allowed us to meet and simply check in with everyone on current status, and seeing where the conversation takes us.  We also have stopped rotating around and have been meeting at the same pizza place on the same day/time each month – we’re “regulars”.

My group is very diverse…not only in their experience level, but also in their personalities (introverts and extroverts), professionally savvy (with those very well networked and those who are not as much), and values (strong beliefs about sustainability, bottom line, ethics, contribution to society).  Having been with these individuals for so long, I know that despite differences, there is a general respect and collegiality that the participants have for one another.  While I don’t think anyone in this group would be likely to have met each other professionally if not for this group, I do think that they would consider each other friends and value our monthly interactions.

I have seen their perspectives open up, their lives shared (many babies and marriages have occurred over the course of years), and professional advancements made.  I have great pride for each one of them – and appreciate all that they’ve taught me.  While I would like to believe that I’m still a “young” architect, I realize that it’s been a long time since I’ve been in their shoes - listening to their daily struggles informs me of the same challenges that my employees are likely to experience…and provides me with the wisdom and insight to best mentor my own.  While I’ve mentored one-on-one in the past, the Laddership model has brought me significantly more satisfaction and reward – so much so that I continue to prioritize and look forward to the monthly meetings.

During the first 5 years, I had enough interest that I recruited mentors and initiated four additional groups.  A few years ago, AIA Seattle took over the administration of the “Laddership” program as a chapter wide event, expanding the program to over a dozen groups.  Over the past 5 years, I have presented this mentorship model several times at the national AIA conference as well as at regional and state conferences across the country. 

This week I fly to San Francisco to kick off the AIA SF Mentorship Program.  It is based on my Laddership model and I’m excited to learn more about how they have adapted the concept to suit the needs of the chapter.  If you know any architects (young or old) in San Francisco, please encourage them to attend.  The model works best when participants represent a continuum of experience levels – it can’t be a bunch of old timers with the newbies straight of school. 

Details and RSVP info about the event can be found at http://2011mentorshipprogram.eventbrite.com/

A Welcoming Patina -- an Opening Salvo to Preserve Our Interior Environment

While much effort in architectural design -- and its evaluation -- revolves around the exterior of buildings, it is the interiors that have the most intimate impact on our lives. This dichotomy is understandable, as the exteriors of buildings, and their surrounding streetscape and landscape are fully within the public gaze. We must not, however, forget the interiors behind the facades, especially those that have the special characteristic of a  'welcoming patina', a quality resulting from age and/or use that make one feel especially comfortable within them. In addition to qualities of age and use, I would add  vernacular design, the resourcefulness of the interior's designer's ability (professional or otherwise) to assemble disparate, often overlooked elements in successful and unique ways. Driven by a lack of resources (and, perhaps with a conscious eye to resisting the corporate, sterile design that pervades our society), these artisans craft a pleasing aesthetic experience from materials that may have otherwise been discarded by others. They resist the impulse to make something 'better' by giving it a fresh coat of paint, a shiny polish, or, by replacing it with something new, and instead revel in incorporating (or letting be) worn paint, mis-matched furnishings, and unfinished walls. Art figures in as well, be it oil on canvas or discarded bottle caps.

On Capitol Hill we are blessed not only with a fine urban (exterior) street-scape, but also with many patinad/vernacular interiors that were not necessarily designed by architects or interior designers, but perhaps by the owners, tenants, artists, and patrons of the space themselves. Interiors by happenstance, as it were.  Thus formed, our shops, restaurants, cafes, and theaters reveal the brush strokes of their many creators, including that most ineffable of characteristics, the patina of time. As Capitol Hill prepares for its next round of development, it is precisely these slightly worn and dusty places that are the types of spaces that we will pine for the most should we lose them, as they are the most difficult to re-create.

Bauhaus Cafe is as fine an example of a welcoming patina and vernacular design as one could find on the Hill. In February 2002, when I was in Seattle for a job interview, Bauhaus cafe was the first Capitol Hill business I entered, and I remember it well. It not only sold me on Seattle, but especially on Capitol Hill, for any neighborhood that could support such a vibrant, gorgeous, interior was certainly where I wanted to live. Three weeks later I left Manhattan for Seattle.

There was obviously design intent and careful consideration in Bauhaus's layout, yet it feels as if it evolved over time, and has a great Northwest vernacular; it is as if it were shaped by the customers and baristas within, with their collective energy somehow contributing to a space that was meant to be.

In addition to its patina and vernacular, Bauhaus Cafe also has a nice variety of spatial types. From the large, main cafe space with its large windows fronting Pine Street, to the more intimate mezzanine and the still more cozy western sliver of a space that looks west, over Melrose Avenue. Finding space where available and making it work, is I suppose another quality of this kind of space. Divorced from planning done by remote corporate headquarters, such spaces adapt to the eddies and flows of their environment, grounding them to their site in a manner impossible to achieve without recognizing the potential in eccentric space.

There is a fine array of materials defining Bauhaus's spaces. The most robust is the wood of the grand bookshelf, which even includes one of those cool rolling ladders. The size of the wall provides an excellent and generous space from which to display the art work that hangs against it. The language of the bookcase nicely morphs into that of the staircase that leads to the mezzanine, which has a classic, load bearing masonry wall on its southern end, and a guard rail/wall affording one a prospect from which to look out over the main cafe space. And though there is an amazing amount of variety within a relatively compact space, the tones and materials blend together in a way so as not complete with each other or for attention. The dark floors, walls, and furniture, emphasize their contrast with the large bright windows. Glare, usually a nuisance and detractor from a space, here heightens one's awareness of the textures and spatial variety.  So complete is the Bauhaus experience, that even it fading exterior sign and crooked storefront proudly proclaim its patina to all who pass.

Although relatively new in its present location, Bimbo's Cantina has many of the above said qualities, yet in a more festive, polychromatic display. Here the interior is an apt reflection of Bimbo's eclectic and tasty offerings. No muted browns and blacks, as at Bauhaus, but vibrant and bright colors reflecting both the food and patrons (who are always a fixture around its welcoming bar). Empty fruit cases, dime-store piñatas, and (every color of the rainbow) sombreros adorn the interior, with an understanding of execution and display of creativity that no suburban, theme-restaurant could ever hope to achieve. And perhaps that is because at Bimbo's, it is not a theme at all, but an exuberant expression of those who created it -- an earnest expression of the people who both own it and work it  -- no a foreign expression of one who does not live the themes display.

Of particular fancy are the bottle-caps, re-purposed in as many ways as there are colors of the caps themselves. I will need to take note over my upcoming visits if these are a dynamic work whose breadth expands with each emptying cerveza. It is more than the objects themselves that are interesting, in fact one could argue that taken singly, they have no real interest in all and would actually be akin to the aforementioned suburban thematic restaurant. What differentiates Bimbo's and other like establishments on the Hill in their use of objet trouvé is in their compositional arrangement, where either through their repetition or assemblage (into forms far divorced from their original), they take on a new and visually pleasing appearance. Such insight into the latent potential of fruit cases is certainly beyond the grasp of an Applebees or Chili's.

By no means are the two above examples even close to representing the depth of Capitol Hill's patinad interiors, they just happen to be the two I visited one Saturday in March. So readers, please offer me your favorite places, with an eye toward continuing this call to action, a call to conserve the best Capitol Hill has to offer.

Building from Another Capitol Hill

[caption id="attachment_1170" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Front Elevation"][/caption] Architecture comes in all shapes and sizes, and from all periods of history. Capitol Hill is fortunate to have a fairly good representation of many historic and contemporary designs. Although most of the buildings in our neighborhood  can be loosely grouped together into any number of 'styles', there are subsets within these larger categories that may have only a few, or perhaps only one representative. The novelty of singularity may at first draw one's attention, but good design is what sustains interest after the initial infatuation has passed. Good design is indeed the case with a modest little building on 231 Summit Avenue East, mid-block between John and Thomas Streets, a building which combines an unusual design approach (for our Capitol Hill) with good design, a design more likely being found on that other Capitol Hill, the one on the Potomac.

[caption id="attachment_1180" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Oblique Elevation"][/caption]

My education as an architect and that of the majority of my colleagues did not delve into historical 'styles' or the vernacular. The history of architecture I was taught presented a building within the cultural context and time within which it was conceived, as well the underlying environmental and technological forces key to its formation.  The teaching of 'styles' and a formal-based approach to design -- and by formal I mean divorcing a building's execution from the above mentioned narratives and emphasizing form (geometry, scale, and proportion) -- was largely dismissed. Older generations of architects, however, received an education that was style based, resulting in buildings being designed with an emphasis on principles that had been vetted through many centuries of practice; however, while oftentimes visually pleasing, such form-based design was not always grounded within its cultural-time. The teaching of styles had its roots in the European academies, especially in France at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and exercised a tremendous impact on early American architecture that continued through the beginnings of the twentieth century, where its force was greatest on the eastern seaboard of the United States, and was slowly diluted as one headed west.

[caption id="attachment_1171" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Exterior Corridor South"][/caption]

Two-hundred thirty-one East Summit falls within the Beaux-Arts approach. The composition of its street elevation -- and a composition indeed it is -- has a formality and understanding of proportion and decorative motifs that indicate an aesthetic rooted in the cultural influences of the East Coast, rather than in the 'pioneer' aesthetic of the Pacific Northwest. Its materials and details are further revealing, including fair-faced (and very red) brick, instead of the more rustic materials common to NW design (think of Anhalt's clinker bricks), as well as terra-cotta trim with thematic elements derived not from nature, but from a pedagogy emphasizing  geometric purity and crispness. The openings if horizontal are sub-divided by windows that have a human (vertical) proportion, or are simply vertical themselves. The exterior corridor/colonnade harkens to east coast cities such as (the other) Georgetown or colonial Boston, cities whose original densities are similar to our Capitol Hill but were built of brick instead of wood (as a means to suppress fire) in a proximity close enough to each other to lead to the development of colonnades, allowing light to penetrate deeper into the building and giving merchants greater venue within which to display their wares.

[caption id="attachment_1173" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Exterior Corridor North"][/caption]

Built in 1925, the architects who designed this handsome little building were not doubt educated and well versed in these older traditions. The faithful and skilled execution of 231 to its guiding design principles makes it a welcomed contributor to the built quality of our neighborhood, and holds many a lesson for architects today, in a tidy, easily digestible package. And though I have both feet firmly planted in the modernist tradition, that tradition's emphasis on continual re-invention and emphasis on originality often comes at the expense of the good for the interesting. Irrespective of one's particular design preferences, we can all learn from buildings such as 231 that are first good, with a little interest added for zest. That so much thought was spent on a very small building makes it even more precious, for similar to the cottages I wrote of several weeks ago, one would be hard pressed to find such a small (or even large), well-crafted building constructed today, ranking it amongst my favorite little anomalies on our Hill.

Seattle's Best Building

Exceptional works of art are a rare and treasured asset to the community. Exceptional architectural works are perhaps even rarer, as the uniting of the client’s needs, the architect’s vision, and the monies available to execute a design present an alignment of three often competing forces. Evoking both intellectual and emotional responses, exceptional architecture not only pushes the boundaries of a particular time or place’s qualities, but also inspires both hemispheres of the mind: the logical (structural/functional) and the artistic (beautiful/sensual). Capitol Hill is extremely fortunate to have such an exceptional architectural work, as it is not only world class but is also welcoming to the community. I write of the Chapel of Saint Ignatius  designed by internationally acclaimed New York (and Bremerton born) architect Steven Holl, on the Seattle University Campus. If you have yet to visit it I strongly encourage you to do so.

[caption id="attachment_1080" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Reflecting Pool"][/caption]

As an architect, I often visit or see photographs of a building and think to myself “hmm, if the architect had done this or that, the building would have really been great (or at least pretty good)". Even with such internationally lauded structures such as Seattle’s Central Library, I have such musings. With the Chapel, no presumption is possible. It is as close to a perfectly conceived, designed, and executed building you are likely to see anywhere, of any design approach, of any program, of any budget or size. Yes, it is that good, and it is right in our back yard.

[caption id="attachment_1091" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Chapel's Entry"][/caption]

The construction of the Chapel consists of tilt-up concrete for the walls and (what I assume to be) light-weight metal framing and zinc siding for the skylights. Tilt-up concrete’s typical use is for the construction of warehouses and industrial buildings, where it is utilized as simple, economically produced rectangular planes that are butted up one against another, providing both structure and enclosure. With the Chapel, the tilt-up panels are planar, yet have a fluid perimeter giving form to the many skylights. The zinc-clad infill framing forms both the curved  and flat planes between the tilt-up bookends. Additionally, the panels have over-lapping seams at the corners and the window openings, instead of being butt-jointed, furthering the expressive and probing design approach of the tilt-up; and, rather than being painted, the panels are stained with an integrated color giving them a deep, sensuous texture. While certainly more expensive and far more creative than a typical application, the tilt-up still remains within the traditional performance characteristics of a planar based, support and enclosure system.

[caption id="attachment_1088" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Entry Wall"][/caption]

I am hard pressed to think of another building that handles daylight in a more magical way than at the Chapel, where soaring skylights, cast glass windows, and concealed openings create mystery and beauty. Daylight is formed, not merely admitted into the space, and is bent by the will of the architect to support his concepts of space and place. Oftentimes screened, the contrast, the shadows, and the filtering of daylight that surrounds you is perhaps the building’s most intense experience, and unlike one you are likely to have anywhere else.

[caption id="attachment_1084" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Cast Glass Window in Entry Wall"][/caption]

The boldness of the building's exterior forms and materials are deftly balanced by an interior of subtle textures, which are skillfully manipulated by the above mentioned daylight. The cross-hatch patterning of the plaster walls, the cast glass windows with their random air bubbles and changes in hue, and the splendid, hand chiseled entry doors immerse one in a sensual world of material splendor. Seven hundred pounds of candle wax form the finish of the Sacristy, creating an otherworldly environment.

[caption id="attachment_1078" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Sacristy"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1127" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Candle-Wax Walls"][/caption]

The spatial quality of the Chapel is as exceptional as any of the above attributes. The curved planes of the ceiling, the light shrouds, and the skylights create the seemingly disparate qualities of intimacy and vastness. The repetitive planes, when seen assemble in perspective, layer the overall Chapel space, creating both extension and containment.

[caption id="attachment_1100" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Looking South Toward the Lobby from the Main Chapel"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1104" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="The Confessional"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1130" align="alignnone" width="700" caption="Interior View Northwest"][/caption]

The evaluation and experience of art and architecture is of course personal. And while checklists can be seen as arbitrary or even naive when forming an opinion of a work of art – especially one that breaks ground in the many refreshing ways as does the Chapel -- I cannot help but think that the Chapel is one of those few buildings that so completely fills out my own list.