Image courtesy of Paul Preissner

Running a practice can be a balancing act of staying creative, finding the motivation to produce great work, all the while committing to the demands of running a professional business. For Chicago-based architect Paul Preissner and his firm Paul Preissner Architects, this delicate dance also involves balancing creativity and responsibility to the work, as well as reinforcing his creative responsibility to himself. 

Preissner describes his practice as "a pretty good architecture and design office from Chicago, Illinois." However, you'll learn to find that his work extends beyond the quirky and obscure. Having experience in working in realms that include housing, civic buildings, furniture, installations, and architectural exhibitions, Preissner continues to show the importance of staying true to the idea of just making things work. For this week's Studio Snapshot, Archinect was able to connect with Preissner to discuss how to making "normal things weird" and "popularizing the idea that boring can be valuable too" might reshape architectural thinking today.

How many people are in your practice?

Right now it's just me.

What prompted you to start your own practice?

I couldn't work in an office any longer. I wasn't happy and wasn't doing good work. 

What are the benefits of having your own practice? Staying small?

I get to choose things that would irritate me otherwise if chosen by someone else.

Is scaling up a goal?

I suppose. I think a while ago it used to be something I cared about lot more, but now I'm fine either way.

What have been the biggest hurdles of having your own practice?

Same as everyone I imagine; getting work that I want to work on, filling out insurance forms, and working on administrative things like bookkeeping. I also enjoy drawing, but it's a lot of drawing.

What do you want your firm to be known for?

Making normal things weird, and popularizing the idea that boring can be valuable too.

Where do you see your firm in 5 years?

Still here in Oak Park. No idea. 

I decided to work with normal anonymity and make "the normal" weird instead of trying so hard to make "the weird" normal.

Your work has a playful and whimsical approach. Have you always had this design aesthetic or did it develop over the years?

Thank you and no. I used to produce much different work, but a number of things happened in 2011 that had an effect on me. I also just stopped making an effort to keep up with the things I did that were borrowed from where I went to school, and my peers. I also started gaining access to opportunities which allowed me to build things, but they were small and inexpensive. I wanted to find a way to make those things still interesting to me and weird. 

I stepped away from doing things that seemed pretty normal and doable, but are somewhat wrong. I decided to work with normal anonymity and make "the normal" weird instead of trying so hard to make "the weird" normal.

I think I also started to become more comfortable with my own influence and those of my friends, and let that motivate my work rather than trying to work without more "pronounced" or "acceptable ideas" of what provocative architecture is. 

With the Chicago Biennial taking place this month are there any works that you're a fan of?

After seeing it, I think I really like Maria Gaspar's wall the best, "Unblinking Eyes, Watching." The video work by Do Ho Such about Robin Hood Gardens was also very neat. There's not a lot of architecture though in this one, even if the themes are architecture-adjacent.

That's a pretty important aspect of the show; having people confront their expectations and then see and maybe experience difficult works of art and architecture.

Having featured your work (Five Rooms) and participated in the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, how does this prominent architecture and design exhibition help those outside of the profession learn about architecture? 

I think it's probably pretty jarring to most guests of the exhibition to see things under the notion of architecture that don't look like what they can recall from their regular lives that architecture is. 

That's a pretty important aspect of the show; having people confront their expectations and then see and maybe experience difficult works of art and architecture.

What do you think is a common misconception emerging young architects fall into when entering professional practice?

I teach, but honestly have no idea what young architects conceptions of practice are anymore, let alone their misconceptions. For me, I thought it would be a little bit easier to get work, but there seems to also be some kind of change when projects are picked up by bigger shops now dipping much smaller in scale and budget to pad their backlog. 

As an educator, how do you see the future of architecture changing? What advice would you give to your students?

The world can be a bit weird sometimes, so I'm not sure how it's going to change. I think its nice to see practices and people younger than me interested in work they can do rather than imagining themselves winning a very expensive museum project right away. I think I threw away a number of years by practicing that fantasy. It takes away from figuring out how you really wanted to practice and what you really want architecture to be, do, and prioritize. 

Any advice I would have be based on personal paths and experiences so I'm not sure how useful it would be, but I think being willing to just keep participating regardless of how embarrassing things get is helpful. Sometimes, moods and tastes and priorities change, and what you were/are doing that [might be] thought of as weak or boring starts to become interesting to others. 

What’s the best advice you’ve been given during your career in architecture?

Well, I was told to quit by a professor during my undergraduate education. That was bad and unhelpful and kind of mean. So that was the worst advice I've been given. The best advice I was probably given was to go home and just work there and make it work. It did somewhat.

Lastly, if you could describe your work/practice in three words, what would they be?

Easygoing. Cheap. Dumb.