I'm on winter break right now (year 2 of the OSU 3+ grad program), and i'm working part time (10am-5pm m-f) at my old job - a mechanical/electrical engineering firm where I do drafting, some design work (using my old BSME degree), and some network/computer administration.
anyway, it's one of these firms that just cranks out schools, hospitals, and prisons, peppered with the odd university or government job, and I think it would literally kill me to work here for any extended period of time.... and I imagine the environment would be about the same at an architectural firm getting the same type of commission. the only thing that keeps me sane here is the fact that i'm learning about linux and network/IT administration whenever I'm working on the computers, but with the pace of the workflow here there's very little opportunity for me to really get deep into design work.
So i wonder, once I graduate with that M.Arch, will it be fairly easy to find a job with an office that actually does interesting work? I don't care about the big names, but for me to be satisfied the work will have to be at least somewhat compelling. This is much more important than salary to me (in fact, i'm only working part time now so i can have a nice bike ride in in the morning, and I don't miss the money).
so, if you've got a "good" job - how did you get it? years of hard work, slaving away on stair details? killer portfolio? luck? networking?
My best jobs have been attained through a combination of networking, my portfolio, and pure dumb luck. Probably in that order. Once you're done with your M.Arch., it wouldn't hurt to join as many clubs and attend as many lectures as possible... Assuming you're in a city that has a reasonable architecture scene. You never know who you'll bump into.
Also, even if you end up doing a lot of grunt work for crappy firms, don't miss any opportunities to show off your design skills when appropriate. Some of my best design work so far has taken place in firms that do otherwise unremarkable work.
Your #1 priority right now should be to make sure you leave school with a kick-ass portfolio, and while you're at it, make a point to become friends with some of your professors along the way. They might be willing to pull some strings for you down the road.
How could you not be excited about designing prisions for a living? In the design you could design secret escapes. Something handy to have in case you might need it someday. Never know.
it is always easier to land that dream job when you have a job already. Even though you may hate your current job (which it sounds like you do) you are employed.
Start the job search now and be paitent. Dont take the 1st job thrown at you just so you can get out of your current position. With a little patience, you will find the job that you want, and wont just be moving on to another shitty job.
Oh, and I heard that sleeping pills and booze is the way to go. Just make sure you take enough or everyone at your office will refer to you as the guy / gal who 'tried' to kill themself but couldn't...doesn't look good on the ol' resume
it's not that i hate my current job, it's just that i don't like it - last year i redid their entire network setup, and i'm the only one who knows how it works. so there's job security even if the pay's not great. I *could* go back working here part time after i graduate, with a raise no doubt, but that's one thing i definitely want to avoid.
that is, unless they want to hire an architect to help my IDP, and start doing some crazy work.
Have you approached the partner / manager / etc about possible letting you have a 'design' position??? I know that it is sometimes hard in offices like these that design by spreadsheet (in that every 'move' is based on the bottom $$$ line) to infuse some 'good design', but you can always try. It may be to your benifit that there are not many other people who care about design in your office (less egos to bruise)
Maybe the company wants to be more of a 'design' firm, but doesnt know how. I would try to exploit this to your advantage.
If it doesnt work, remember...lots of sleeping pills
I went for years lusting after a 'designer' job. Remember though that you can end up working for a good designer and end up just kowtowing to *their* latest enthusiasms. Anyway, I spent years and years with lousy jobs or being miserable in less lousy jobs. Somehow, though, even non-designer jobs get much better once you gain sufficient responsibility to be creative about it.
In the meantime, though, I concentrated on:
1. Spending too much money on designer outfits instead
2. Ensuring my cutlery was imported from France and included the most expensive fork in the neighbourhood
3. Writing journals to get it all off my chest and thinking 'next step: novel'
4. Placing a synthesizer next to my computer at home so that I'm a songwriter, really
5. Watching documentaries on MTV
6. Watching films, not movies, except for a fortnightly treat down the multiplex
Now I'm a fully-rounded human.
Next I'll be the architect I wanted to be in the days when I played with Lego (TM)
As LiG mentioned, make sure your portfolio is kick-ass upon graduation but! don't downplay your ME(P?) firm experience too much. A fresh-minted architecture grad who has previous office environment experience AND knows how to coordinate MEP in a construction set is a valuable employee, in my opinion.
that's a job i'd want: doing white castles. not wendy's, screw them, but white castle is a commission i could believe in...
i'd get little white-green glass tiles to symbolize that all-important onion piece and that would be the kitchen tile...
oh, dreams...why do they never come true...
sorry. ok. you've done your time at the crap firm, you should be able to parlay that very easily into a decent job once you get your m.arch.
but i think you should save up a little, pick a city, move there, and then search. many firms want you NOW, not in three months once you and your live-in girl/boyfriend and your cat get your affairs settled.
Seriously though, don't get so hung-up on "what to do" right away. No really GOOD employer wants to hire some newbie nervous wreck who is worried about all that crap. Just be RELAXED and OPEN in the interview. Do whatever they want you to. LEARN. You think you're learning something with the fancy "M. Arch"... trust me, you don't know squat. Get out, get a normal job and just learn learn learn. Then a few years down the road start looking for that "design" position if you still want it. NOBODY is going to want to work with you and NOBODY is going to respect you if you're just a "designer", because if you're a designer who doesn't know the details, you'll just be incompetent and hated at ANY firm you work for.
I agree with Liberty Bell, get to know and understand what you're doing at the MEP firm. For example one of our greatest VP's here used to work for a structural engineer... this guy REALLY knows his stuff... and has ALL the RESPECT from EVERYONE (including CEOs) in the firm.
Also get a wide variety of experience. Don't just do hospitals or prisons or residential, it makes you a boring, one-dimensional architect.
My experience so far has told me that doing the bread and butter work may not be interesting, but it does allow me to eat, live, and dress well. And I'm learning a lot about what it takes to actually make the sexy design projects successful outside the design studio.
making jump to bread and butter to starchitecture type stuff is not easy. best to choose early which way you wanna go.
as has been hinted at above the skills required are different.
most of above is derogatory re the starchitect group but i personally think that is sour grapes...thing is i know architects who are qualified (in all the ways you can measure), respected and so competent it would kill you, but i would never ever give them a job that involved designing....because they can't. really they can't. after 40 years experience of that sort of work what they are ready to do is run a job for someone with design skills...they are amazing at getting things built on time and on budget, which is def cool, but mostly it sets them up to be underlings in a good office...to be fair also they can be top dog in a service-based firm...both are cool, but need to make a choice at some point.
One word of caution though, about learning the ropes by doing dull, technical stuff in 'normal' jobs. After Grad School, this is precisely what I did. To be honest, I was getting dulled to the joys of hi-concept paper architecture too. Thing is, due to personal circumstances it was nearly a decade before I got my final professional accreditation and the sort of resume that makes me a confident job runner (big jobs) construction detailing, team leadership and so on. So, feeling that was accomplished, I thought it high time to return to the glamorous end of the market. But by this time I have a flat in a provincial city and other responsibilities which make me loathe to move back to, say, a flatshare in London. The 'designer' firms in this locality look at my CV and my choices and they don't seem to understand or credit the sincerity of my overall plan. I don't have a recent portfolio of the kind of stuff they want to see. In other words, they've typecast me just a little.
So now I'm back to trying to up the ante at my work in commercial practice. I'll do what I'm driven to do no matter what, with or without the context but I would advise you, starting out... OK I never give or receive advice (!!!) so just a thought: maybe keep your upscale portfolio of work up-to-date with competition entries and the like, to demopnstrate your full potential. This isn't easy after a full day's work (I don't do it) but don't unwittingly remove yourself from that inter-starchitect-teaching-position job club... it's hard to get back into after a spell outside.
This pretty much concurs with what jump says, although I disagree that one 'unlearns' design skills. Where there's a will there's a way.
yeh, my experience is a bit like yours solidred, though i am managing to change directions slowly...
thing is the clients that i work for now would not be satisfied with the work i did in my first few offices (neither would i), and the ability to design the way i do now has not come easily, precisely because of my technical experience. after 5 years of learning nuts and bolts it can be very hard to suddently be asked to design a custom archi-tecty building and not get caught out overdesigning...far as i know, barring innate ability, the only way through that is to get experience being a designer in a design-led office.
which is to say it isn't a matter of un-learning design cuz of working in commercial firm, but rather not getting the chance to learn how to design beyond the basics we al pick up in school. there really is a lot to learn about architecture after graduating with a MArch, and it is not all HVAC and engineering and code compliance or cad standards...not sure when it happened but for me personally i think i finally learned how to do my current job when i figured out that design means "not designing" and stepping back from showing my hand in everything i touch (nothing worse than overcooked design).
for me, right now, clarity is a rule of supreme importance; and that means both construction and concept. in my first jobs clarity was not on the table. may be different for others but for me there is not a chance of learning that aspect of design in a position that only allows you to deal with the grunt work...so if you wanna be a great designer better to start on learning that part of the trade as quick as possible. lots of ways to get there, mind.
Absolutely agree with you Jump, though I was just thinking that one develops (in commercial / pragmatic practice) ones very conception about what construction and architecture are all about in a certain sense: about the number of people with their own parts to play; about the money and where its coming from and to what ends it's being placed and about the people for whom the buildings are made (users and the public both). Therefore this sense of what's important changes, much like one's perception of the world itself changes if you start a family (I haven't been there yet, mind).
However, the same set of obstacles come in the way of 'designer' or 'starchitects' too, except their sense of the same priorities as were in place at architecture school is constantly refreshed by visiting professorships, publication of projects (and the peer pressure that follows) and publication of theoretical texts. In this sense, I'd argue that these guys stay focused. Rather than balancing everyone elses needs and aspirations, they stay advocating art and culture (for want of better words) that for the rest of us, though we may remain keen, even passionate about them (like me) start to be regarded as personal rather than professional pursuits simply because our professional roles simply can't withstand the war of attrition waged against them: nobody on your average procurement team except for the architect gives a flying **** for art or culture unless, of course, you client is the Getty Centre, Prada, or any of the other usual suspects employing exclusively starchitects for their buildings.
Essentially, by becoming good at being pragmatic, one inadvertantly looses the support structure necessary for maintaining our original aims.
does anyone have any experience working with - not to say "second-tier" - offices founded by former designers from starchitect's staff? the kind of stuff that's still high-design-minded capital-A Architecture, but also neccessarily concerned with the budget, and (obviously?) paying attention to things like, say, mechanical rooms?
I disagree w/ tk, evan--and a lot of the problems w/ "bread and butter" firms that are highlighted in this thread can be avoided by choosing to work for a small, high-design firm. On the other hand you will not have much benefits or job security or money. It's kind of up to you.
the reality of the architectural office is mechanical room sizes, occupancy classifications, egress, firewalls, retention ponds, setbacks, construction types, clarifications, rfi's, asks, get fucking over it.
midwest does not necessarily equate to bad design. I had a great experience in cincinnati working for what you call a "second tier" architect.. doing some pretty nice designs. Yes, the big, expensive, high profile projects in the midwest are fewer than on the coasts, but they do exist and are often picked up by non-signature architects.
I would also consider working at firms that are chosen as the state architects for larger projects by signature architects. Cincinnati has a bunch of them because of their recent surge of signature work ( primarily on UC's campus) Glaserworks who worked on Tschumi's project there, and KZF who worked on the Morphosis project, come to mind.
I also co-oped for Lorenz and Williams in Dayton which worked on Eisenman's building at UC.
Another thing i have noticed now being on the east coast is that it seems that there is more opportunity to work on "ground up" projects in the midwest. Everyone i know from my years in ohio that are now in nyc are working on interiors in the city.
I briefly worked with RMJM on Miralles' Scottish Parliament. This, I felt, was the equivalent of doing all the thankless difficult stuff whilst my more fortunate brethren built beautiful timber models in sunny Barcelona. Interesting though it undoubtedly was, I couldn't avoid thinking I'd got the bum end of the deal.
"the reality of the architectural office is mechanical room sizes, occupancy classifications, egress, firewalls, retention ponds, setbacks, construction types, clarifications, rfi's, asks, get fucking over it."- vado retro
this is just an effective part of the reality. i am working with people who see themselves as being very pragmatic in providing resolved and luxurious 'solutions' to normally very rich clients. they always see what they do as being a deterministic outcome of what their unquestioned reality is; in other words, the effective part is an alibi for an unquestioning production of mediocrity, creativity is time-consuming and untested. they have made their narrow and converging corridors and they traffic in them. this is fine, even if they wish to add banal edifices within a banal city...banality, as i see it, also has its place it the world. but what shouldn't have a place in the world is an essentially bitchy pedantics that lectures others on "the reality of....is...". normally, i find persons do this to lazily convince themselves of this 'reality' and get over their own disillusionments.
The schematic design portion of a true building project is a small small part. The majority of the time spent on a construction project is THE CONSTRUCTION of the project. And a narrow converging corridor is a freaking code violation.
I was about to give all this perfect advice but now I'll feel pretty stupid if I do.
I'll guess I'll just get back to my disillusioned life of mech. rm sizes, occupancy classsifications, egress, etc. position at my bottom tier midwest firm.
vado is right really, but i would add the caveat that practice is like school, very much what you make it. detailing and code compliance can be as much a part of design (as creative act) as the preliminary design phase of a project. probably more important really.
on avoiding suicide / getting a decent job
I'm on winter break right now (year 2 of the OSU 3+ grad program), and i'm working part time (10am-5pm m-f) at my old job - a mechanical/electrical engineering firm where I do drafting, some design work (using my old BSME degree), and some network/computer administration.
anyway, it's one of these firms that just cranks out schools, hospitals, and prisons, peppered with the odd university or government job, and I think it would literally kill me to work here for any extended period of time.... and I imagine the environment would be about the same at an architectural firm getting the same type of commission. the only thing that keeps me sane here is the fact that i'm learning about linux and network/IT administration whenever I'm working on the computers, but with the pace of the workflow here there's very little opportunity for me to really get deep into design work.
So i wonder, once I graduate with that M.Arch, will it be fairly easy to find a job with an office that actually does interesting work? I don't care about the big names, but for me to be satisfied the work will have to be at least somewhat compelling. This is much more important than salary to me (in fact, i'm only working part time now so i can have a nice bike ride in in the morning, and I don't miss the money).
so, if you've got a "good" job - how did you get it? years of hard work, slaving away on stair details? killer portfolio? luck? networking?
don't rule out suicide...
My best jobs have been attained through a combination of networking, my portfolio, and pure dumb luck. Probably in that order. Once you're done with your M.Arch., it wouldn't hurt to join as many clubs and attend as many lectures as possible... Assuming you're in a city that has a reasonable architecture scene. You never know who you'll bump into.
Also, even if you end up doing a lot of grunt work for crappy firms, don't miss any opportunities to show off your design skills when appropriate. Some of my best design work so far has taken place in firms that do otherwise unremarkable work.
Your #1 priority right now should be to make sure you leave school with a kick-ass portfolio, and while you're at it, make a point to become friends with some of your professors along the way. They might be willing to pull some strings for you down the road.
Just my $.02 worth... Back to window details.
damn...i was gonna say find a hobby in the meantime before work and hobby become one...
How could you not be excited about designing prisions for a living? In the design you could design secret escapes. Something handy to have in case you might need it someday. Never know.
"Jeeez, Warden, I'd really hate it if you put me in Cell Block 4A. Whatever you do, pleeeease don't put me into Cell Block 4A!"
...and then have the entire plans tatooed on your torso.
You know, just in case you ever need to make a prison break.
My advice...
it is always easier to land that dream job when you have a job already. Even though you may hate your current job (which it sounds like you do) you are employed.
Start the job search now and be paitent. Dont take the 1st job thrown at you just so you can get out of your current position. With a little patience, you will find the job that you want, and wont just be moving on to another shitty job.
Oh, and I heard that sleeping pills and booze is the way to go. Just make sure you take enough or everyone at your office will refer to you as the guy / gal who 'tried' to kill themself but couldn't...doesn't look good on the ol' resume
belive me
it's not that i hate my current job, it's just that i don't like it - last year i redid their entire network setup, and i'm the only one who knows how it works. so there's job security even if the pay's not great. I *could* go back working here part time after i graduate, with a raise no doubt, but that's one thing i definitely want to avoid.
that is, unless they want to hire an architect to help my IDP, and start doing some crazy work.
Have you approached the partner / manager / etc about possible letting you have a 'design' position??? I know that it is sometimes hard in offices like these that design by spreadsheet (in that every 'move' is based on the bottom $$$ line) to infuse some 'good design', but you can always try. It may be to your benifit that there are not many other people who care about design in your office (less egos to bruise)
Maybe the company wants to be more of a 'design' firm, but doesnt know how. I would try to exploit this to your advantage.
If it doesnt work, remember...lots of sleeping pills
lengthwise cut on the arm instead of crosswise...
leave columbus - it's a better world outside of ohio.
I went for years lusting after a 'designer' job. Remember though that you can end up working for a good designer and end up just kowtowing to *their* latest enthusiasms. Anyway, I spent years and years with lousy jobs or being miserable in less lousy jobs. Somehow, though, even non-designer jobs get much better once you gain sufficient responsibility to be creative about it.
In the meantime, though, I concentrated on:
1. Spending too much money on designer outfits instead
2. Ensuring my cutlery was imported from France and included the most expensive fork in the neighbourhood
3. Writing journals to get it all off my chest and thinking 'next step: novel'
4. Placing a synthesizer next to my computer at home so that I'm a songwriter, really
5. Watching documentaries on MTV
6. Watching films, not movies, except for a fortnightly treat down the multiplex
Now I'm a fully-rounded human.
Next I'll be the architect I wanted to be in the days when I played with Lego (TM)
Did someone mention Columbus? That'll be Jeff territory!
yeah, getting out of columbus at the top of the list. i love this place, but i've gotta get out.
I have found suicide is hard to avoid these days
there are white castles and wendy's in other cities.
and by "i love this place" i mean "i know people here, and I have already located the best bars"
i'm thinking chicago, san fransisco, portland, providence....
As LiG mentioned, make sure your portfolio is kick-ass upon graduation but! don't downplay your ME(P?) firm experience too much. A fresh-minted architecture grad who has previous office environment experience AND knows how to coordinate MEP in a construction set is a valuable employee, in my opinion.
concentrate on doing great work in grad school.
get kipnis on your side. he's sent a lot of people to starchitects' offices out of school (including myself)... his support is invaluable.
that's a job i'd want: doing white castles. not wendy's, screw them, but white castle is a commission i could believe in...
i'd get little white-green glass tiles to symbolize that all-important onion piece and that would be the kitchen tile...
oh, dreams...why do they never come true...
sorry. ok. you've done your time at the crap firm, you should be able to parlay that very easily into a decent job once you get your m.arch.
but i think you should save up a little, pick a city, move there, and then search. many firms want you NOW, not in three months once you and your live-in girl/boyfriend and your cat get your affairs settled.
i mean, they want you to be immediately available when you interview.
hell, if you don't find a cool arch job right away, you might be able to also parlay that BSME degree into a stopgap situation.
if you apply to SOM (not saying it's a cool job) you would probably be able to do either ME, arch, or both.
if you want advice on avoiding getting a decent job...
i'd design whitecastle with a breathalyzer at the entry.... sometimes it just seems like such a great idea....
Seriously though, don't get so hung-up on "what to do" right away. No really GOOD employer wants to hire some newbie nervous wreck who is worried about all that crap. Just be RELAXED and OPEN in the interview. Do whatever they want you to. LEARN. You think you're learning something with the fancy "M. Arch"... trust me, you don't know squat. Get out, get a normal job and just learn learn learn. Then a few years down the road start looking for that "design" position if you still want it. NOBODY is going to want to work with you and NOBODY is going to respect you if you're just a "designer", because if you're a designer who doesn't know the details, you'll just be incompetent and hated at ANY firm you work for.
I agree with Liberty Bell, get to know and understand what you're doing at the MEP firm. For example one of our greatest VP's here used to work for a structural engineer... this guy REALLY knows his stuff... and has ALL the RESPECT from EVERYONE (including CEOs) in the firm.
Also get a wide variety of experience. Don't just do hospitals or prisons or residential, it makes you a boring, one-dimensional architect.
Well spoken LMF and J.
My experience so far has told me that doing the bread and butter work may not be interesting, but it does allow me to eat, live, and dress well. And I'm learning a lot about what it takes to actually make the sexy design projects successful outside the design studio.
making jump to bread and butter to starchitecture type stuff is not easy. best to choose early which way you wanna go.
as has been hinted at above the skills required are different.
most of above is derogatory re the starchitect group but i personally think that is sour grapes...thing is i know architects who are qualified (in all the ways you can measure), respected and so competent it would kill you, but i would never ever give them a job that involved designing....because they can't. really they can't. after 40 years experience of that sort of work what they are ready to do is run a job for someone with design skills...they are amazing at getting things built on time and on budget, which is def cool, but mostly it sets them up to be underlings in a good office...to be fair also they can be top dog in a service-based firm...both are cool, but need to make a choice at some point.
One word of caution though, about learning the ropes by doing dull, technical stuff in 'normal' jobs. After Grad School, this is precisely what I did. To be honest, I was getting dulled to the joys of hi-concept paper architecture too. Thing is, due to personal circumstances it was nearly a decade before I got my final professional accreditation and the sort of resume that makes me a confident job runner (big jobs) construction detailing, team leadership and so on. So, feeling that was accomplished, I thought it high time to return to the glamorous end of the market. But by this time I have a flat in a provincial city and other responsibilities which make me loathe to move back to, say, a flatshare in London. The 'designer' firms in this locality look at my CV and my choices and they don't seem to understand or credit the sincerity of my overall plan. I don't have a recent portfolio of the kind of stuff they want to see. In other words, they've typecast me just a little.
So now I'm back to trying to up the ante at my work in commercial practice. I'll do what I'm driven to do no matter what, with or without the context but I would advise you, starting out... OK I never give or receive advice (!!!) so just a thought: maybe keep your upscale portfolio of work up-to-date with competition entries and the like, to demopnstrate your full potential. This isn't easy after a full day's work (I don't do it) but don't unwittingly remove yourself from that inter-starchitect-teaching-position job club... it's hard to get back into after a spell outside.
This pretty much concurs with what jump says, although I disagree that one 'unlearns' design skills. Where there's a will there's a way.
yeh, my experience is a bit like yours solidred, though i am managing to change directions slowly...
thing is the clients that i work for now would not be satisfied with the work i did in my first few offices (neither would i), and the ability to design the way i do now has not come easily, precisely because of my technical experience. after 5 years of learning nuts and bolts it can be very hard to suddently be asked to design a custom archi-tecty building and not get caught out overdesigning...far as i know, barring innate ability, the only way through that is to get experience being a designer in a design-led office.
which is to say it isn't a matter of un-learning design cuz of working in commercial firm, but rather not getting the chance to learn how to design beyond the basics we al pick up in school. there really is a lot to learn about architecture after graduating with a MArch, and it is not all HVAC and engineering and code compliance or cad standards...not sure when it happened but for me personally i think i finally learned how to do my current job when i figured out that design means "not designing" and stepping back from showing my hand in everything i touch (nothing worse than overcooked design).
for me, right now, clarity is a rule of supreme importance; and that means both construction and concept. in my first jobs clarity was not on the table. may be different for others but for me there is not a chance of learning that aspect of design in a position that only allows you to deal with the grunt work...so if you wanna be a great designer better to start on learning that part of the trade as quick as possible. lots of ways to get there, mind.
forget columbus > get out of the midwest.
good design and midwest 'normal' don't coexist well.
Absolutely agree with you Jump, though I was just thinking that one develops (in commercial / pragmatic practice) ones very conception about what construction and architecture are all about in a certain sense: about the number of people with their own parts to play; about the money and where its coming from and to what ends it's being placed and about the people for whom the buildings are made (users and the public both). Therefore this sense of what's important changes, much like one's perception of the world itself changes if you start a family (I haven't been there yet, mind).
However, the same set of obstacles come in the way of 'designer' or 'starchitects' too, except their sense of the same priorities as were in place at architecture school is constantly refreshed by visiting professorships, publication of projects (and the peer pressure that follows) and publication of theoretical texts. In this sense, I'd argue that these guys stay focused. Rather than balancing everyone elses needs and aspirations, they stay advocating art and culture (for want of better words) that for the rest of us, though we may remain keen, even passionate about them (like me) start to be regarded as personal rather than professional pursuits simply because our professional roles simply can't withstand the war of attrition waged against them: nobody on your average procurement team except for the architect gives a flying **** for art or culture unless, of course, you client is the Getty Centre, Prada, or any of the other usual suspects employing exclusively starchitects for their buildings.
Essentially, by becoming good at being pragmatic, one inadvertantly looses the support structure necessary for maintaining our original aims.
does anyone have any experience working with - not to say "second-tier" - offices founded by former designers from starchitect's staff? the kind of stuff that's still high-design-minded capital-A Architecture, but also neccessarily concerned with the budget, and (obviously?) paying attention to things like, say, mechanical rooms?
that's called working for the man, aka corporate architecture...
if i wanted to rub elbows w/ stevie holl, i could have gone to the book signing @ peter miller last night.
frankly, i'd rather jump off a bridge.
I disagree w/ tk, evan--and a lot of the problems w/ "bread and butter" firms that are highlighted in this thread can be avoided by choosing to work for a small, high-design firm. On the other hand you will not have much benefits or job security or money. It's kind of up to you.
the reality of the architectural office is mechanical room sizes, occupancy classifications, egress, firewalls, retention ponds, setbacks, construction types, clarifications, rfi's, asks, get fucking over it.
that kind of talk gets me all excited, vado.
i'm bringing sexy back!
wait - there's a way to get job security and money?
i didn't say that...
Aren't you thinking of the pornstar job that many people seemed enthusiastic about on the 'alternative careers' thread?
midwest does not necessarily equate to bad design. I had a great experience in cincinnati working for what you call a "second tier" architect.. doing some pretty nice designs. Yes, the big, expensive, high profile projects in the midwest are fewer than on the coasts, but they do exist and are often picked up by non-signature architects.
I would also consider working at firms that are chosen as the state architects for larger projects by signature architects. Cincinnati has a bunch of them because of their recent surge of signature work ( primarily on UC's campus) Glaserworks who worked on Tschumi's project there, and KZF who worked on the Morphosis project, come to mind.
I also co-oped for Lorenz and Williams in Dayton which worked on Eisenman's building at UC.
Another thing i have noticed now being on the east coast is that it seems that there is more opportunity to work on "ground up" projects in the midwest. Everyone i know from my years in ohio that are now in nyc are working on interiors in the city.
I briefly worked with RMJM on Miralles' Scottish Parliament. This, I felt, was the equivalent of doing all the thankless difficult stuff whilst my more fortunate brethren built beautiful timber models in sunny Barcelona. Interesting though it undoubtedly was, I couldn't avoid thinking I'd got the bum end of the deal.
It didn't help that there were definite overtones of 'visionary talents and the hacks'
if you dont kill yourself, someone else may
"the reality of the architectural office is mechanical room sizes, occupancy classifications, egress, firewalls, retention ponds, setbacks, construction types, clarifications, rfi's, asks, get fucking over it."- vado retro
this is just an effective part of the reality. i am working with people who see themselves as being very pragmatic in providing resolved and luxurious 'solutions' to normally very rich clients. they always see what they do as being a deterministic outcome of what their unquestioned reality is; in other words, the effective part is an alibi for an unquestioning production of mediocrity, creativity is time-consuming and untested. they have made their narrow and converging corridors and they traffic in them. this is fine, even if they wish to add banal edifices within a banal city...banality, as i see it, also has its place it the world. but what shouldn't have a place in the world is an essentially bitchy pedantics that lectures others on "the reality of....is...". normally, i find persons do this to lazily convince themselves of this 'reality' and get over their own disillusionments.
... or persons, like one of the little prince's planetary characters, far too comically busy being busy being busy being...
The schematic design portion of a true building project is a small small part. The majority of the time spent on a construction project is THE CONSTRUCTION of the project. And a narrow converging corridor is a freaking code violation.
Thanks noctilucent,
I was about to give all this perfect advice but now I'll feel pretty stupid if I do.
I'll guess I'll just get back to my disillusioned life of mech. rm sizes, occupancy classsifications, egress, etc. position at my bottom tier midwest firm.
funny cynical posts.
vado is right really, but i would add the caveat that practice is like school, very much what you make it. detailing and code compliance can be as much a part of design (as creative act) as the preliminary design phase of a project. probably more important really.
It's a problem, though, getting that freakin' murano glass and japanese paper meta-corridor with the sloping floor to convince as a fire escape.
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.