I'm trading a wee bit of design services for some homebrewing lessons and borrowed equipment. Brewed the first batch today! An American Amber Ale. Hope it turns out. Any other homebrewers out there?
i think the REAL issue is firms taking advantage of the young people that flock to their firms. why blame the victim here? the young interns have no experience and no major options. Orhan...you had the advantage of going to school with, and being taught by a number of great architects....alot of people don't have that advantage...the best way to learn the practice of architecture is from people that are in the lead of the profession...of course there are firms you can work for, be paid by and ulitmately gain experience, but the best time to work for cheap is when you're young...but cheap is one thing..free is another. even mcdonald's pays their workers... architects should surely be held at least to the same standard as any normal fast food chain or walmart or whatever.. noone's going to go broke paying minimum wage
as far as asymptote goes...i personally know people that worked there.. i don't know anything about their salaries..but one of things they said was that it was a very young firm...so that detailing was difficult since many of them didn't really know what they were doing. and my friend also said they did have a lot of interns.
pretending that this is some kind of he said/she said sort of thing also doesn't change the problem with this practice..we all know there are firms that do this...and there are firms that also hire consultants instead of employees so they can save money on insurance and taxes... ultimately these are almost always illegal practices and open up firms to potential litigation. of course most of these firms count on the fact that people will accept these practices and that those same people won't be going to court.
in the end it hurts us all...firms that have free labor can underbid other firms on fee...instead of actually charging what the services are worth...
can anyone imagine ANY MEP firm not paying their employees? instead they actually charge for all (or most) of their time at rates commensurate with the people they put on the job.
ah well. in my mind there should be no excuses made for these people...people trying to justify it by saying the young are at fault because they willingly go to these firms...for shame. the firms that take advantage KNOW what they're doing is wrong..taking young people and burning them out and not paying for their time is a blight on our profession.
(note: regarding hiring consultants..i mean more the practice of hiring consultants who work min 40 hrs/wk for at least one year or more and are not hired as full time employess.)
i agree with lars. it goes back to the age-old dilemma for anyone starting out, you need experience to get a job, but can't get experience without having had a job. what these offices are doing is essentially 'charging admission' to the profession by asking entry-level aspiring architects to 'pay' for their experience with free labor. how is that not a form of extortion?
...and what other professions do this? in every profession i can think of, it's customary to train employees...and to pay them during the training period.
lars, you are generalizing and speculating things don't apply to me. i went to school where some of the now superstars were teaching but my first jobs were in less than mundane mediocre offices where i did drafting to no end. i was called in for free labor by then boutique places (before the terminology was coined) but i couldn't afford to do it.
i learned a lot from those mediocre places, needless to say and proud of myself for not chasing fame of others and feeling i need them to succeed. recommended to all.
*sigh* 'nother sunday spent working on my cv/research statement and portfolio. why is this so tough??? I should be a pro at this after a decade and a half of apply for jobs. oh well, gotta get this one out tomorrow, so I better accept that it'll be good enough. got at least 2 more sundays that I'll be spending in my office to get these tenure-track apps out, plus what ever it takes to prep for any interviews. no I wonder why already I'm burning out after just the first week in the semester... anybody feel like proofreading?
if its relatively short I can make time to proofread TK. sort of fits into my day actually. i am proofreading the english curriculum for the architecture planning and landscape courses.
the rest of my day will be spent trying to coax rhino into giving me the drawings i want so i can get a quote for a small project with a tight schedule. nothing like learning new things under a deadline !
@ orhan, but you know it is true you got to learn from very talented intelligent people. i can easily imagine the lure of having access to that talent for many people from all over the world totally makes working for free enticing. in fact i know that is why so many people do it.
i did the same as you and never was taught by a starchitect, nor worked for one. i work WITH them now and know a few socially, and am finding myself glad that i have had to teach myself to think about architecture and how to design on my own, because the power of their ideas and personalities is really overwhelming. but when i was younger i might have made that choice. luckily/un-luckily i was not self-aware enough to know it was even an option.
that said, yes, mcdonalds wages does make sense to me, at the very least.
hi jump, for me it was really being in a place where a lot were happening. it was the times also. the energy was amazing. the down side of it was that it only focused on same group of people. there were a lot of unsung people who also did good work. in school, i was mainly trained by conceptual artists than bona fide architects. that was a bit of early positioning in criticality and shot out few options. me and few other friends, mainly me and eric chavkin, who contributes to archinect, formed this group called abc. we didn't know what we were doing but publishing manifesto like articles. one called morphosis group "post mortem." you can imagine taking a shot at the establishment back then. in 1982 we lampooned then young bernard tschumi as "sexual intellectual" before his lecture in sci arc and distributed article on xerox paper. there were a lot of stuff we insiminated. abc got little too big and we dis assembled it as a political statement. after that we organized lecture series that we were condemned for only until eisenman rejected the establishment's series and joined ours. you can read from the names here what we were interested in conceptual side of things, as others were in the thick of formal post modernism.
it cost us a lot of hardship. we were winging it by taking day jobs using our drawing skills. people were not interested much in the critical discourse. eighties were silent years for criticality or it was killed easily.
anyway, the lesson of this all was that, if you have a specific goal and that requires personal sacrifice, you need to do it. for me it kind of happened on an automatic pilot and it still keeps going and i am here to make best sense from it, produce my own voice. i am enjoying every second of it.
i wouldn't hand over my development into the hands of celebrity culture. specially now. it is not even hip anymore.
"i work for my hero."
"sorry to hear that. it is only a matter of time you'll grow out of it. make sure they pay you..."
"the real issue here is the young bourgeoisie flocking to hi profile starry offices and creating this culture." - orhan
"Orhan...you had the advantage of going to school with, and being taught by a number of great architects....alot of people don't have that advantage"
Orhan,
someday i'd like to meet you and have a long conversation..sometimes i think the things i say here get misconstrued or lost in type or whatever. but what did i say that was wrong?
what i meant is that you had the advantage of going to sci-arc at a time where alot of the 'starchitects' were teaching, going, etc..no? consequently you are now/and have been/ friends of these people..
to then criticize people that don't have that similar situation, which most architecture students don't, seems unfair to me. possibly i'm confused.
i personally worked three years at a decent firm, 8 months at another, then three years at a pseudo starchitects office, 8 months at KPF, 1.5 years at an interior firm, and three more years at another pseudo starchitects office...i got paid at every job...but there is definitely something to be learned at each office. and i think it's important to learn how some people work and how they get jobs. i'm not sure i'm interested in settling for mediocrity and working in the same place doing details of walmart or some other mundane typical job..i like challenging designs and details and such.
maybe i'm misreading you..but it seemed to me that you were blaming young people for going to firms that are popular and getting in magazines...like they're the ones who decided not to pay them... do you remember how naive you were coming out of college? shouldn't we then people that should know better for taking advantage of that naivete?
As I wrote on the "dear arch schools" thread, there is no excuse for taking advantage of young people - if you're savvy enough to run a business, you're required to meet the laws governing that business.
I think we can say to students, over and over and loudly, that working for free is NOT a good decision, but have to also tell the firms that what they are doing is illegal.
i am not blaming anybody. i just don't condone star architect culture and young people are buying into it like herds. i don't consider somebody graduate from a five year university naive anymore. they know exactly plus or minus what they want. we talked about this when i interviewed peter cook on school culture part of the conversation.
that all sounds cool orhan. forgive me but it sounds like you worked for your hero too, only that it involved a different set of people and intentions. and you were in many ways your own hero.
what i mean is, the way you describe it sounds like you were the opposite side of the same coin...but for a lot of people there is no coin to be had at all...so they go for the bit you were once fighting against - and work for free for sejima just to be exposed to something special. is that all that bad?
doesn't mean that an office should run on the backs of that kind of aspiration-driven junkie, but i sure do understand how attractive it can be. You had access and decided to reject it, but you were still, respectfully, on the inside. not everyone has that.
which has nothing to do with the right or wrong of it, only that there is a gap that is being filled. in those circumstances i guess the only answer is regulation to save people from their desires...?
there is something to be said for being exposed to 'genius'.
the star architect culture has existed since...forever probably.
FLW used to charge people to come and learn from him...and work on his drawings.
i imagine there were those that wanted to work for Ikthanos and Kalikartes sp? and worked for free as well...
i think there are many reasons to work for 'stars'...you get to work on very interesting projects (art museums, institutional buildings, skyscrapers or whatever) and you're not going to get that at other firms. i don't quite understand why those at the top of our profession shouldn't be admired...top thinkers in any profession attract people to them..why should our profession be any different? moreover why should that idea be discouraged? what am i missing here?
"the real issue here is the young bourgeoisie flocking to hi profile starry offices and creating this culture. i really think these people should be connected to a lot of setbacks we have in architecture and held accountable and be put in their place by the people who are critical of the said old and tired elitist system of yesterday's architectural cliques."
orhan...if this isn't blaming these young graduates than i don't know what is...of course these are your words so i guess you know what your intent was..but don't give me an orange and tell me it's an apple.
with thousands of people graduating each year from architecture schools, wanting to work for handful of usual suspect offices is often a pipe dream, creating huge demand and therefore setting oneself to be exploited. what are you guys talking about is missing the point i am making.
these handful of offices doing/pitching those demanded projects (often themselves unpaid and purely on spec) are having people sleep on their doorsteps. sometimes they are too nice to allow those people to peek in let alone pay them. if you are one those willing and knowing that you will not get paid but be part of the elite, work on the presentation, build a model, whatever, then don't cry six months later and say they used me and now they are buying a condo when in fact they didn't get the project even though you can use their name on your portfolio. that is your pay and obviously it opens other doors for you and you have got what you wanted.
see the whole picture here not just the tip of the iceberg.
this is just a view and educated observation. don't try to prove me wrong, i am not 'right..'
i still don't understand how demand for employment justifies not paying someone for doing work for that firm... eventually you get what you pay for.
and i don't think many expect to go for long periods of time not earning money... i'd imagine that in some cases there are promises made that are never met.
maybe we can agree to blame both for creating a culture that is setting the whole profession back...also possibly keeping others outside of the profession from taking us seriously...how would it appear to a banker or lawyer to hear about practices involving this sort of thing? of course even normal salaries would be a joke to them.
basically we agree via different observations and positions. i am not against people wanting to work for great architects and in their offices. but if it is like cult, than we need to look further into what we are as a profession and its academia.
My brother-in-law is in Russia, but seriously, I don't' know Elena:
Hello
This is Elena. I think my email for you is surprise. And i hope it is a
nice surprise.
I think you will have a question about "where did i find yours email
address. I used a services of serious attitudes agency.
They asked me what kind of men i like, and then they offer me to start a
correspondence with you via email.
This agency said me that your email address they found at dating site.
As i said you before my name is Elena. And i am 31 years old. And i am
absolutely lonely girl.
I was born and live now in Russia in small town in central part. The name
of my town is Glazov.
My birthday is 21 of August 1979. I have no children, but i love them.
I work as a librarian in school library. I like read books very much, and i
happy that my work with books and children.
Maybe learning more about each other we can have serious relations.
I search my love. I want
to have real relations.
It is a little about myself. I hope it was interesting for you.
I will be waiting your answer very much.
You will interest at my letter
One of the things that irks me, but kind of makes me laugh, about non-paid interns is what does it say about their attitude towards the firms that hire them later?
I mean if someone comes to me and says "I worked for Star Arch for free, because s/he's so awesome, but I expect you to pay me, because frankly you're insignificant and I need my IDP hours", how likely, really, am I to hire that person? I feel crappily enough about myself as it is, I don't need "Joshua's castoffs" to make me feel even worse!
when I was first starting out I had many run-ins during interviews where people just assumed I could get financial support from my family - but they were more things like "why didn't you get your portfolio professionally printed?" - or "you'll need a car for this job." One jerk once told me to "just ask your rich uncle" and I told him to go eff himself. This kind of ignorance is astounding - and even today I keep encountering it.
This is what pisses me off the most about unpaid internships... I probably would have done it if someone could have supported me - I'd have done it for the name on my resume, to be exposed to that kind of work, and for the network of elite industry contacts and clients. But it's an opportunity only reserved for people who can afford it. It's illegal for good reason - not just that it "takes advantage" of youngsters, but also because it's exclusionary - only for the rich kids. My feeling is that if you participate in this culture you are basically keeping a lot of people, like myself, out of this exclusive club. If someone is whining about their unpaid position at some starchitect's office my guess is they still have more money than I did when I was in their situation, and, like orhan, I'm unsympathetic to their plight. If they really couldn't afford to do this they'd have told these assholes where to stick their unpaid internship during the interview.
the fact that unpaid internships still persist is because there are always going to be people who will use whatever resources they have to get ahead - so the rich kids will continue to offer their services "for free" to gain access because they can - and the marginally wealthy people will follow suit and then whine about it if they don't get that full-time position in the end. the firms are the ones that should know better and work to be an "equal opportunity employer" - but having someone offer to work for you for free is pretty hard to pass up - even if you know it is illegal.
you can blame the "rich kids" or the "young bourgeoisie," but the bottom line is the fact that it is illegal for the employer to employ unpaid interns, not the other way around.
(just as an aside, unless your office is structured to take advantage of (exploit) unpaid interns, despite widely-held beliefs, unpaid interns are not desirable for most firms. they are very hard to work into project teams, require an inordinate amount of babysitting, and are almost guaranteed to leave just when they are becoming useful. my wife's firm, a non-profit, went through a situation where someone volunteered to work for free; the woman was an alumnae of our university, and my wife wanted to help her out. it turned out to be a huge headache and definitely not worth the time invested.)
there are a lot of people, especially those right out of school, who live off loans or go into credit card debt for these 'opportunities'. and just because some people get help from parents doesn't necessarily mean the parents can comfortably give it...these things stretch resources for many people.
TK, does your wife know you're on a russian dating site? For Shame!
It's kinda wierd to be having this kind of discussion on TC. Glad it hasn't gotten out of hand.
I don't know that we're even discussing whether it's fair to the intern or not. I think it's bigger than that. It's unfair to the proffession, and undermines us all. Remember this is part of the reason unions cam about it the first place. We don't need any riots.
I read the online lynching that was going on in both agreement and hesitancy to judge as people were calling out someone without any due process. Yes, it's wrong to employ free interns to do your professional business, but no one knows that these charges can be substantiated.
The matter should be taken to the Department of Professional Regulation for them to handle. That's part of their job.
As an employer, I have found interns to be more miss than hit. I had one, whom I paid, leave for an unpaid position at a bigger firm with star power because he didn't want to make models all day. In the end I was glad to get rid of him because he cost me $600 a week and accomplished very little.
I can see why an employer would want to have an intern work for free or, better yet, for credit.
I think a push for a mandatory one-year, for-credit internship would be a nice solution. Whether or not it is paid depends on the office. That way someone could have a choice. It would be required for any accredited degree.
i'm runnin a place now. doin architectural antiques/wholesaling antique flooring etc. a few people have come in off the streets, including a kid who must have been nine at the most, looking to get some day work. none of them offered to intern for free, though.
I would like to host a productive debate on unpaid internships here on Archinect. The principal of the firm that was targeted the other day has agreed to participate, representing the side that argues FOR unpaid internships, and says that he can bring in a few others. It should be easy to find people to argue against it, so if you're up for participating let me know.
This is a good opportunity to create the unpaid labor is illegal bandana to wear on the forehead, fashionably coordinated with the architecture sucks t-shirt.
I understand the legal issues regarding free labor, in that it is not cool. And agree that the startchitect/unpaid intern model can hurt the entire industry, but that is the nature of the industry.
I'll play devil's advocate here: Can't "payment" come in other forms? Let's assume for a minute that one of these unpaid intern positions is not a typical intern position (where the intern completes boring, but billable work.) I could see that having an internship where I wasn't expected to be profitable right off the bat would have been very advantageous to me and ultimately to the profession. Getting a paycheck, but never being exposed to 60% of the profession because "somebody's got to stay here and draw" instead of going along to the pre-bid meeting or job site, which was not profitable. If I had known Orhan back then, maybe I would have paid HIM to let me hang out and learn the ropes of the biz without the pressure of being profitable instead of sitting around an architect's office, taking some drafter's job, trying to pick up what random things I could while being shuffled around like a temp. If an internship opportunity arose where I could have been a shadow to an experienced architect for 3 years, maybe I'd have stayed with architecture.
I often talk about my first internship, the one with the civil engineer where it was my job was to hang out with him and learn. He took me everywhere and showed me everything he did, I was his mini-me. I was treated nicer than the project engineers! I learned more in that 6 months about buildings and construction than I learned in the next year or two as an intern in an arch's office.
Although I am far from wealthy, I more or less bought my current job. Is that wrong? It is an investment that is going to pay off in very different ways (already has) and ultimately in much more fruitful ways than a bi-monthly paycheck. Zoom out a bit and it is easy to see the other side. Ultimately, isn't everything we do about return on investment, both money and time? The typical architecture internship, in my experience, was a poor investment for me, even though I was paid for it.
that sounds very good idea paul. i hope you do it.
unpaid internship is part of japanese system. i actually think it works fine. it is i believe viewed as part of education. ie, a graduate is not going to be an intern.
to be honest it is much harder to accept that a licensed FT architect in tokyo makes less than 25k a year if they work for someone famous (i am talking tokyo here. that salary would not pay my rent but its totally common). it goes up over time but architects here tend to be very poorly paid just in general. ironically, america, land of capitalism is more socialist than japan, which actually has a communist party ;-)
jump, I think that distinction could wind up being an important one in finding a solution to the unpaid-intern situation. If for instance it became ok to hire student interns without pay, would it then become easier to enforce having to pay those with accredited degrees? It doesn't solve everything because obviously many students still won't be able to afford to take a job they're not getting paid for so there would still be a certain amount of rich bias, but I think that having one set of rules for student interns and another for recent grads might still be a fruitful path.
some schools allow students to work for outside employers as part of a work-study program. They are paid by the program, not the employer, but because of this, there are strict regulations governing the types of work they do and the number of hours they work. This seems like a good arrangement to me. The interns are protected, are guaranteed a bona-fide learning experience, and the employer gets his/her free labor but is held responsible.
the school I went to had a similar program where they would pay the students for unpaid internships at non-profit arts organizations. they don't pay students for work at firms, because as it states on their website,
'traditional architecture internships are nearly without exception paid positions.'
or, you can promise legal work visas and grad school admissions to those illegal foreigners (on 3-month tourist visas) who "survive" your unpaid internship...
OK, that link you posted elinor, with fucking Eisenman saying "Unpaid interns are great! And the only people who achieve any (aka MY) status in the world of architecture are people who start as unpaid interns!" is exactly why I'm fearful to be involved in any kind of online forum about unpaid internship - because the very thought of someone defending the practice makes me furious! And when I get mad I can't respond in a cool, logical way even though I KNOW I'm right; I just devolve into a spitting ball of rage and cursing. The idea of some privileged fuckwad classifying lowly peons who deign to follow the law as somehow inferior to those tower-dwelling self-proclaimed artistes makes me veer wholeheartedly into one of vado's favorite sayings: bring on the revolution, motherfuckers!
So Paul, I love the idea - absolutely love it! - of Archinect hosting a discussion on it - but I really, really don't think I can participate in any useful way. I'll just turn into Joe Wilson but instead of yelling You lie! I'll be yelling "Bullshit!". No one wants that!
Paul, sounds great. I would definitely, participate..
This is one of those debates I have stayed out of not being in the profession;
However, I think a key point people have brought up before is the idea of other forms of compensation. So sure, if it is for some sort of academic credit many professions have some sort of interning requirement. One point is these sorts of interns often work a finite amount both in terms of the length of the internship and hours worked.
Yet, this sounds very different than the sorts of experiences I often hear third hand through Archinect.
Even there though, as Orhan and others pointed out you are if interning for a huge firm or staritect there is non-paid forms of compensation (ie: cache etc). But then you do get to specific profession based issues. Such as market-share, total available jobs etc.
Anywho,
Got 12 hour day tomorrow... Maybe Wed too. making pasta and broccoli rabe.. night all.
Thread Central
I'm trading a wee bit of design services for some homebrewing lessons and borrowed equipment. Brewed the first batch today! An American Amber Ale. Hope it turns out. Any other homebrewers out there?
orhan, i wrote in that thread exactly that.
orhan/beta
i think the REAL issue is firms taking advantage of the young people that flock to their firms. why blame the victim here? the young interns have no experience and no major options. Orhan...you had the advantage of going to school with, and being taught by a number of great architects....alot of people don't have that advantage...the best way to learn the practice of architecture is from people that are in the lead of the profession...of course there are firms you can work for, be paid by and ulitmately gain experience, but the best time to work for cheap is when you're young...but cheap is one thing..free is another. even mcdonald's pays their workers... architects should surely be held at least to the same standard as any normal fast food chain or walmart or whatever.. noone's going to go broke paying minimum wage
as far as asymptote goes...i personally know people that worked there.. i don't know anything about their salaries..but one of things they said was that it was a very young firm...so that detailing was difficult since many of them didn't really know what they were doing. and my friend also said they did have a lot of interns.
pretending that this is some kind of he said/she said sort of thing also doesn't change the problem with this practice..we all know there are firms that do this...and there are firms that also hire consultants instead of employees so they can save money on insurance and taxes... ultimately these are almost always illegal practices and open up firms to potential litigation. of course most of these firms count on the fact that people will accept these practices and that those same people won't be going to court.
in the end it hurts us all...firms that have free labor can underbid other firms on fee...instead of actually charging what the services are worth...
can anyone imagine ANY MEP firm not paying their employees? instead they actually charge for all (or most) of their time at rates commensurate with the people they put on the job.
ah well. in my mind there should be no excuses made for these people...people trying to justify it by saying the young are at fault because they willingly go to these firms...for shame. the firms that take advantage KNOW what they're doing is wrong..taking young people and burning them out and not paying for their time is a blight on our profession.
(note: regarding hiring consultants..i mean more the practice of hiring consultants who work min 40 hrs/wk for at least one year or more and are not hired as full time employess.)
i agree with lars. it goes back to the age-old dilemma for anyone starting out, you need experience to get a job, but can't get experience without having had a job. what these offices are doing is essentially 'charging admission' to the profession by asking entry-level aspiring architects to 'pay' for their experience with free labor. how is that not a form of extortion?
...and what other professions do this? in every profession i can think of, it's customary to train employees...and to pay them during the training period.
lars, you are generalizing and speculating things don't apply to me. i went to school where some of the now superstars were teaching but my first jobs were in less than mundane mediocre offices where i did drafting to no end. i was called in for free labor by then boutique places (before the terminology was coined) but i couldn't afford to do it.
i learned a lot from those mediocre places, needless to say and proud of myself for not chasing fame of others and feeling i need them to succeed. recommended to all.
*sigh* 'nother sunday spent working on my cv/research statement and portfolio. why is this so tough??? I should be a pro at this after a decade and a half of apply for jobs. oh well, gotta get this one out tomorrow, so I better accept that it'll be good enough. got at least 2 more sundays that I'll be spending in my office to get these tenure-track apps out, plus what ever it takes to prep for any interviews. no I wonder why already I'm burning out after just the first week in the semester... anybody feel like proofreading?
if its relatively short I can make time to proofread TK. sort of fits into my day actually. i am proofreading the english curriculum for the architecture planning and landscape courses.
the rest of my day will be spent trying to coax rhino into giving me the drawings i want so i can get a quote for a small project with a tight schedule. nothing like learning new things under a deadline !
@ orhan, but you know it is true you got to learn from very talented intelligent people. i can easily imagine the lure of having access to that talent for many people from all over the world totally makes working for free enticing. in fact i know that is why so many people do it.
i did the same as you and never was taught by a starchitect, nor worked for one. i work WITH them now and know a few socially, and am finding myself glad that i have had to teach myself to think about architecture and how to design on my own, because the power of their ideas and personalities is really overwhelming. but when i was younger i might have made that choice. luckily/un-luckily i was not self-aware enough to know it was even an option.
that said, yes, mcdonalds wages does make sense to me, at the very least.
@tk... i'd be happy to proofread your materials... it would be interesting to see how yours differ from mine...
J & P, sent via FB...
is there a FB club for TC people? are there more than TC people on FB?
toaster - yeah most of us are, drop beta a note for an invite...
hi jump, for me it was really being in a place where a lot were happening. it was the times also. the energy was amazing. the down side of it was that it only focused on same group of people. there were a lot of unsung people who also did good work. in school, i was mainly trained by conceptual artists than bona fide architects. that was a bit of early positioning in criticality and shot out few options. me and few other friends, mainly me and eric chavkin, who contributes to archinect, formed this group called abc. we didn't know what we were doing but publishing manifesto like articles. one called morphosis group "post mortem." you can imagine taking a shot at the establishment back then. in 1982 we lampooned then young bernard tschumi as "sexual intellectual" before his lecture in sci arc and distributed article on xerox paper. there were a lot of stuff we insiminated. abc got little too big and we dis assembled it as a political statement. after that we organized lecture series that we were condemned for only until eisenman rejected the establishment's series and joined ours. you can read from the names here what we were interested in conceptual side of things, as others were in the thick of formal post modernism.
it cost us a lot of hardship. we were winging it by taking day jobs using our drawing skills. people were not interested much in the critical discourse. eighties were silent years for criticality or it was killed easily.
anyway, the lesson of this all was that, if you have a specific goal and that requires personal sacrifice, you need to do it. for me it kind of happened on an automatic pilot and it still keeps going and i am here to make best sense from it, produce my own voice. i am enjoying every second of it.
i wouldn't hand over my development into the hands of celebrity culture. specially now. it is not even hip anymore.
"i work for my hero."
"sorry to hear that. it is only a matter of time you'll grow out of it. make sure they pay you..."
"the real issue here is the young bourgeoisie flocking to hi profile starry offices and creating this culture." - orhan
"Orhan...you had the advantage of going to school with, and being taught by a number of great architects....alot of people don't have that advantage"
Orhan,
someday i'd like to meet you and have a long conversation..sometimes i think the things i say here get misconstrued or lost in type or whatever. but what did i say that was wrong?
what i meant is that you had the advantage of going to sci-arc at a time where alot of the 'starchitects' were teaching, going, etc..no? consequently you are now/and have been/ friends of these people..
to then criticize people that don't have that similar situation, which most architecture students don't, seems unfair to me. possibly i'm confused.
i personally worked three years at a decent firm, 8 months at another, then three years at a pseudo starchitects office, 8 months at KPF, 1.5 years at an interior firm, and three more years at another pseudo starchitects office...i got paid at every job...but there is definitely something to be learned at each office. and i think it's important to learn how some people work and how they get jobs. i'm not sure i'm interested in settling for mediocrity and working in the same place doing details of walmart or some other mundane typical job..i like challenging designs and details and such.
maybe i'm misreading you..but it seemed to me that you were blaming young people for going to firms that are popular and getting in magazines...like they're the ones who decided not to pay them... do you remember how naive you were coming out of college? shouldn't we then people that should know better for taking advantage of that naivete?
shouldn't we then BLAME THE people that should know better for taking advantage of that naivete?
As I wrote on the "dear arch schools" thread, there is no excuse for taking advantage of young people - if you're savvy enough to run a business, you're required to meet the laws governing that business.
I think we can say to students, over and over and loudly, that working for free is NOT a good decision, but have to also tell the firms that what they are doing is illegal.
i am not blaming anybody. i just don't condone star architect culture and young people are buying into it like herds. i don't consider somebody graduate from a five year university naive anymore. they know exactly plus or minus what they want. we talked about this when i interviewed peter cook on school culture part of the conversation.
tree send them over - I'm going to be stuck in an office staring at the four walls at least for 6 hours. Email them and I'll read them from my phone.
Wise words Orhan
that all sounds cool orhan. forgive me but it sounds like you worked for your hero too, only that it involved a different set of people and intentions. and you were in many ways your own hero.
what i mean is, the way you describe it sounds like you were the opposite side of the same coin...but for a lot of people there is no coin to be had at all...so they go for the bit you were once fighting against - and work for free for sejima just to be exposed to something special. is that all that bad?
doesn't mean that an office should run on the backs of that kind of aspiration-driven junkie, but i sure do understand how attractive it can be. You had access and decided to reject it, but you were still, respectfully, on the inside. not everyone has that.
which has nothing to do with the right or wrong of it, only that there is a gap that is being filled. in those circumstances i guess the only answer is regulation to save people from their desires...?
what jump said...
there is something to be said for being exposed to 'genius'.
the star architect culture has existed since...forever probably.
FLW used to charge people to come and learn from him...and work on his drawings.
i imagine there were those that wanted to work for Ikthanos and Kalikartes sp? and worked for free as well...
i think there are many reasons to work for 'stars'...you get to work on very interesting projects (art museums, institutional buildings, skyscrapers or whatever) and you're not going to get that at other firms. i don't quite understand why those at the top of our profession shouldn't be admired...top thinkers in any profession attract people to them..why should our profession be any different? moreover why should that idea be discouraged? what am i missing here?
maybe i'm confused.
"the real issue here is the young bourgeoisie flocking to hi profile starry offices and creating this culture. i really think these people should be connected to a lot of setbacks we have in architecture and held accountable and be put in their place by the people who are critical of the said old and tired elitist system of yesterday's architectural cliques."
orhan...if this isn't blaming these young graduates than i don't know what is...of course these are your words so i guess you know what your intent was..but don't give me an orange and tell me it's an apple.
with thousands of people graduating each year from architecture schools, wanting to work for handful of usual suspect offices is often a pipe dream, creating huge demand and therefore setting oneself to be exploited. what are you guys talking about is missing the point i am making.
these handful of offices doing/pitching those demanded projects (often themselves unpaid and purely on spec) are having people sleep on their doorsteps. sometimes they are too nice to allow those people to peek in let alone pay them. if you are one those willing and knowing that you will not get paid but be part of the elite, work on the presentation, build a model, whatever, then don't cry six months later and say they used me and now they are buying a condo when in fact they didn't get the project even though you can use their name on your portfolio. that is your pay and obviously it opens other doors for you and you have got what you wanted.
see the whole picture here not just the tip of the iceberg.
this is just a view and educated observation. don't try to prove me wrong, i am not 'right..'
i still don't understand how demand for employment justifies not paying someone for doing work for that firm... eventually you get what you pay for.
and i don't think many expect to go for long periods of time not earning money... i'd imagine that in some cases there are promises made that are never met.
maybe we can agree to blame both for creating a culture that is setting the whole profession back...also possibly keeping others outside of the profession from taking us seriously...how would it appear to a banker or lawyer to hear about practices involving this sort of thing? of course even normal salaries would be a joke to them.
basically we agree via different observations and positions. i am not against people wanting to work for great architects and in their offices. but if it is like cult, than we need to look further into what we are as a profession and its academia.
My brother-in-law is in Russia, but seriously, I don't' know Elena:
HelloThis is Elena. I think my email for you is surprise. And i hope it is a
nice surprise.
I think you will have a question about "where did i find yours email
address. I used a services of serious attitudes agency.
They asked me what kind of men i like, and then they offer me to start a
correspondence with you via email.
This agency said me that your email address they found at dating site.
As i said you before my name is Elena. And i am 31 years old. And i am
absolutely lonely girl.
I was born and live now in Russia in small town in central part. The name
of my town is Glazov.
My birthday is 21 of August 1979. I have no children, but i love them.
I work as a librarian in school library. I like read books very much, and i
happy that my work with books and children.
Maybe learning more about each other we can have serious relations.
I search my love. I want
to have real relations.
It is a little about myself. I hope it was interesting for you.
I will be waiting your answer very much.
You will interest at my letter
Yours new friend from Russia. Elena.
Morning all.
Going to be a long, and cold week. Even here in FL.
One of the things that irks me, but kind of makes me laugh, about non-paid interns is what does it say about their attitude towards the firms that hire them later?
I mean if someone comes to me and says "I worked for Star Arch for free, because s/he's so awesome, but I expect you to pay me, because frankly you're insignificant and I need my IDP hours", how likely, really, am I to hire that person? I feel crappily enough about myself as it is, I don't need "Joshua's castoffs" to make me feel even worse!
not trying to prove you wrong orhan ;-)
don't you think you are part of the system too though? on the god side of course....
the point about teaching the star system is interesting. not sure how to avoid it entirely. heroes are important an us all.
donna's my hero.
And you're mine, Steven, so that works out nicely!
when I was first starting out I had many run-ins during interviews where people just assumed I could get financial support from my family - but they were more things like "why didn't you get your portfolio professionally printed?" - or "you'll need a car for this job." One jerk once told me to "just ask your rich uncle" and I told him to go eff himself. This kind of ignorance is astounding - and even today I keep encountering it.
This is what pisses me off the most about unpaid internships... I probably would have done it if someone could have supported me - I'd have done it for the name on my resume, to be exposed to that kind of work, and for the network of elite industry contacts and clients. But it's an opportunity only reserved for people who can afford it. It's illegal for good reason - not just that it "takes advantage" of youngsters, but also because it's exclusionary - only for the rich kids. My feeling is that if you participate in this culture you are basically keeping a lot of people, like myself, out of this exclusive club. If someone is whining about their unpaid position at some starchitect's office my guess is they still have more money than I did when I was in their situation, and, like orhan, I'm unsympathetic to their plight. If they really couldn't afford to do this they'd have told these assholes where to stick their unpaid internship during the interview.
the fact that unpaid internships still persist is because there are always going to be people who will use whatever resources they have to get ahead - so the rich kids will continue to offer their services "for free" to gain access because they can - and the marginally wealthy people will follow suit and then whine about it if they don't get that full-time position in the end. the firms are the ones that should know better and work to be an "equal opportunity employer" - but having someone offer to work for you for free is pretty hard to pass up - even if you know it is illegal.
you can blame the "rich kids" or the "young bourgeoisie," but the bottom line is the fact that it is illegal for the employer to employ unpaid interns, not the other way around.
(just as an aside, unless your office is structured to take advantage of (exploit) unpaid interns, despite widely-held beliefs, unpaid interns are not desirable for most firms. they are very hard to work into project teams, require an inordinate amount of babysitting, and are almost guaranteed to leave just when they are becoming useful. my wife's firm, a non-profit, went through a situation where someone volunteered to work for free; the woman was an alumnae of our university, and my wife wanted to help her out. it turned out to be a huge headache and definitely not worth the time invested.)
there are a lot of people, especially those right out of school, who live off loans or go into credit card debt for these 'opportunities'. and just because some people get help from parents doesn't necessarily mean the parents can comfortably give it...these things stretch resources for many people.
TK, does your wife know you're on a russian dating site? For Shame!
It's kinda wierd to be having this kind of discussion on TC. Glad it hasn't gotten out of hand.
I don't know that we're even discussing whether it's fair to the intern or not. I think it's bigger than that. It's unfair to the proffession, and undermines us all. Remember this is part of the reason unions cam about it the first place. We don't need any riots.
Thanks for the earlier comments and understanding. TC is a bastion of reason in this forum ;)
You guys are awesome.
I read the online lynching that was going on in both agreement and hesitancy to judge as people were calling out someone without any due process. Yes, it's wrong to employ free interns to do your professional business, but no one knows that these charges can be substantiated.
The matter should be taken to the Department of Professional Regulation for them to handle. That's part of their job.
As an employer, I have found interns to be more miss than hit. I had one, whom I paid, leave for an unpaid position at a bigger firm with star power because he didn't want to make models all day. In the end I was glad to get rid of him because he cost me $600 a week and accomplished very little.
I can see why an employer would want to have an intern work for free or, better yet, for credit.
I think a push for a mandatory one-year, for-credit internship would be a nice solution. Whether or not it is paid depends on the office. That way someone could have a choice. It would be required for any accredited degree.
What do you think?
i'm runnin a place now. doin architectural antiques/wholesaling antique flooring etc. a few people have come in off the streets, including a kid who must have been nine at the most, looking to get some day work. none of them offered to intern for free, though.
I would like to host a productive debate on unpaid internships here on Archinect. The principal of the firm that was targeted the other day has agreed to participate, representing the side that argues FOR unpaid internships, and says that he can bring in a few others. It should be easy to find people to argue against it, so if you're up for participating let me know.
This is a good opportunity to create the unpaid labor is illegal bandana to wear on the forehead, fashionably coordinated with the architecture sucks t-shirt.
Interesting, Paul.
I thought the male partner of Asymptote was not licensed? (And therefore not a partner?)
If that's who you're talking about...
Vado, you're doing antiques? in NOLA?
I understand the legal issues regarding free labor, in that it is not cool. And agree that the startchitect/unpaid intern model can hurt the entire industry, but that is the nature of the industry.
I'll play devil's advocate here: Can't "payment" come in other forms? Let's assume for a minute that one of these unpaid intern positions is not a typical intern position (where the intern completes boring, but billable work.) I could see that having an internship where I wasn't expected to be profitable right off the bat would have been very advantageous to me and ultimately to the profession. Getting a paycheck, but never being exposed to 60% of the profession because "somebody's got to stay here and draw" instead of going along to the pre-bid meeting or job site, which was not profitable. If I had known Orhan back then, maybe I would have paid HIM to let me hang out and learn the ropes of the biz without the pressure of being profitable instead of sitting around an architect's office, taking some drafter's job, trying to pick up what random things I could while being shuffled around like a temp. If an internship opportunity arose where I could have been a shadow to an experienced architect for 3 years, maybe I'd have stayed with architecture.
I often talk about my first internship, the one with the civil engineer where it was my job was to hang out with him and learn. He took me everywhere and showed me everything he did, I was his mini-me. I was treated nicer than the project engineers! I learned more in that 6 months about buildings and construction than I learned in the next year or two as an intern in an arch's office.
Although I am far from wealthy, I more or less bought my current job. Is that wrong? It is an investment that is going to pay off in very different ways (already has) and ultimately in much more fruitful ways than a bi-monthly paycheck. Zoom out a bit and it is easy to see the other side. Ultimately, isn't everything we do about return on investment, both money and time? The typical architecture internship, in my experience, was a poor investment for me, even though I was paid for it.
that sounds very good idea paul. i hope you do it.
unpaid internship is part of japanese system. i actually think it works fine. it is i believe viewed as part of education. ie, a graduate is not going to be an intern.
to be honest it is much harder to accept that a licensed FT architect in tokyo makes less than 25k a year if they work for someone famous (i am talking tokyo here. that salary would not pay my rent but its totally common). it goes up over time but architects here tend to be very poorly paid just in general. ironically, america, land of capitalism is more socialist than japan, which actually has a communist party ;-)
jump, I think that distinction could wind up being an important one in finding a solution to the unpaid-intern situation. If for instance it became ok to hire student interns without pay, would it then become easier to enforce having to pay those with accredited degrees? It doesn't solve everything because obviously many students still won't be able to afford to take a job they're not getting paid for so there would still be a certain amount of rich bias, but I think that having one set of rules for student interns and another for recent grads might still be a fruitful path.
some schools allow students to work for outside employers as part of a work-study program. They are paid by the program, not the employer, but because of this, there are strict regulations governing the types of work they do and the number of hours they work. This seems like a good arrangement to me. The interns are protected, are guaranteed a bona-fide learning experience, and the employer gets his/her free labor but is held responsible.
the school I went to had a similar program where they would pay the students for unpaid internships at non-profit arts organizations. they don't pay students for work at firms, because as it states on their website,
'traditional architecture internships are nearly without exception paid positions.'
they apparently know their labor laws...
or, you can promise legal work visas and grad school admissions to those illegal foreigners (on 3-month tourist visas) who "survive" your unpaid internship...
http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=2353
can this possibly be legit?!
correction...nothing 'illegal' about foreigners on tourist visas...:)
OK, that link you posted elinor, with fucking Eisenman saying "Unpaid interns are great! And the only people who achieve any (aka MY) status in the world of architecture are people who start as unpaid interns!" is exactly why I'm fearful to be involved in any kind of online forum about unpaid internship - because the very thought of someone defending the practice makes me furious! And when I get mad I can't respond in a cool, logical way even though I KNOW I'm right; I just devolve into a spitting ball of rage and cursing. The idea of some privileged fuckwad classifying lowly peons who deign to follow the law as somehow inferior to those tower-dwelling self-proclaimed artistes makes me veer wholeheartedly into one of vado's favorite sayings: bring on the revolution, motherfuckers!
So Paul, I love the idea - absolutely love it! - of Archinect hosting a discussion on it - but I really, really don't think I can participate in any useful way. I'll just turn into Joe Wilson but instead of yelling You lie! I'll be yelling "Bullshit!". No one wants that!
Donna,
Remember that Peter Eisenman went bankrupt at least twice and Phyllis Lambert bailed him out once, if not both times.
He gets free everything.
Paul, sounds great. I would definitely, participate..
This is one of those debates I have stayed out of not being in the profession;
However, I think a key point people have brought up before is the idea of other forms of compensation. So sure, if it is for some sort of academic credit many professions have some sort of interning requirement. One point is these sorts of interns often work a finite amount both in terms of the length of the internship and hours worked.
Yet, this sounds very different than the sorts of experiences I often hear third hand through Archinect.
Even there though, as Orhan and others pointed out you are if interning for a huge firm or staritect there is non-paid forms of compensation (ie: cache etc). But then you do get to specific profession based issues. Such as market-share, total available jobs etc.
Anywho,
Got 12 hour day tomorrow... Maybe Wed too. making pasta and broccoli rabe.. night all.
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.