i have a possibly strong connection with eisenman's office and need to know whether i should push that connection or not. i would like to ask some questions to people that have worked there (for at least 3+ months, or gone through the summer intern program). i would be going for the summer intern program next summer. i would be going into my thesis (5th) year of undergraduate architecture with 5 years of architecture work experience, + a set of construction documents.
i know i'd be there till 1+ every morning. (how true is this?)
i know i'd be getting no pay. (i heard him say it in that interview that was on here, so i have to assume. if i'm wrong please let me know)
what do interns usually do? if it matters, undergrad interns?
what is the working environment like? what is the space like? what are the people like?
how big of an office is it? how many people?
on staying late, do they pay for dinners?
what time do you need to be in for work?
how common is working weekends (just saturday? both days?)
what is the overall working experience like (looking back?)
i thought it put the "i know" part of this post to get rid of posts like that. i dont need people to question my decisions. why work for zaha? why work for holl? why work for asymptote?
i do not want personal opinion of how eisenman sucks. because to some, he doesnt. that crit is retarded, but i'm not trying to study under him (that i would never do)
i shouldnt post on a public (as if theres private...) forum because of trolls. okay. wait no, public forums are the best place for the widest range of people, and my hope is to find one that can actually answer the questions i'm asking, instead of giving me shit for asking them in the first place
mdler is no troll moron...he is just posting his opinion - if you do not like it...don't post the question...jesh - you know...freedom of speech and all that.
you may too soft skinned to work for a starchitect...that would be my assumption from you knee jerk whining. Maybe you will get to scrape human feces from the sidewalk like an intern did at Predock's while I was working there.
that said, this thread is amusing me at least. still hoping for someone who is not uselessly posting their opinion in a thread where no opinion was asked for. these are not opinion questions. and neither of you have even tried to give an "opinionated" answer to the questions (which isnt even possible because there is no opinion about these, just fact that can only be known by someone that has gone through it), just bantering me for saying i may work for eisenman.
Based on the experience of a former roommate of mine's boyfriend:
what do interns usually do? if it matters, undergrad interns?
Built models. Nothing else.
what is the working environment like? what is the space like? what are the people like?
No comments on the space, but he liked the location in the city. The only people there with whom he had any significant interaction were all exactly like him: students, international, young, hopeful, inexperienced.
how big of an office is it? how many people?
Enough free interns to make a soccer team, at least.
on staying late, do they pay for dinners?
He didn't mention it. Doubtful.
what time do you need to be in for work?
I think it was 9am - after being there til midnight.
how common is working weekends (just saturday? both days?)
No such thing as weekends. Each day like the next.
what is the overall working experience like (looking back?)
He was glad he did it, but said it sucked. But he was still glad he did it - but it really, really sucked.
Note: After three months of work he got a T-shirt, so I guess you can't say he *actually* worked for free.
...and I'll just keep my opinion on the wisdom of working free for anyone to myself.
if you are going to put yourself through the 'hell' of working for Eisenman, you may as well choose someone who actually knows what they are doing (knows how to put buildings together)
I know many places (some even in NYC) where you will learn 100x what you would at Eisenman's, you will get paid, you wont work 100hrs a week, and they are nice
just because you can get a job their doesnt mean that you should
Get your name on your resume while you can, try to pick up something useful while there (I learned some super model building techniques at my first job with a well known architect). Then move on.
It'll be a well known name and it'll be a story you can bitch about for decades. Priceless.
bell: thank you very much for your extremely insightful and helpful post. it gave me a lot of points to discuss with my "connection" (my boss). thank you
going out of order here;
trace: thats my thinking. read on
mdler: what you said is where my head is at right now. i am at a point where i feel like i need to, but more importantly WANT to work for one of this huge names; i need to prove to myself that i can do that type of work. it is very, VERY hard to get a job at one of these large names as an undergrad student with a life. i applied to many "starchitect" firms and got to the last round for one, but didnt make the cut.
the reason why i am thinking more and more of eisenman (aside from the fact that i have a connection there) is that i am very conceptual in my design. i have been trying to find a firm that is well known, very conceptual, and is surviving. my ideal is tschumi or REX, but i have no connections there; i tried at both last summer and at the time REX wasnt hiring AT ALL and tschumi was a no :(. i want to go through the process of a starchitect intern, but i want to do it at a firm where i like the design (process at least). i have started looking at smaller firms (nARCHITECTS is one example, same story as REX though for this summer). ive worked at successful firms, ive worked at nice firms, ive never worked at something more.
so i'm trying to find a "big" (take that word very lightly and abstractly) firm, with a very recognizable name, that is conceptual. i almost feel that eisenman is overly conceptual to the point of where its arbitrary! the enemy!
sigh. so if anyone can recommend any other firms that you think i would be interested in, PLEASE let me know!; i really want to make next summer an unbelievable one in my architectural "career". but otherwise, thank you for the useful comments (the ones that have been)
if you are willing to work for Eisenman for free (and can afford to) you may want to try to approcah other offices by telling them that you will work for free (I KNOW THAT THIS IN UN-ETHICAL) but it may be worth a try
also, if your work is very conceptual you may want to work for someone whos work is 180 degrees from what you are doing. You will probably learn a lot more about the profession this way (how to build WHICH I THINK IS IMPORTANT, how to run a business WHICH I THINK IS IMPROTANT, etc)
mdler: thats actually what i'm doing now. not out of choice, but by chance. it has been a very unexpectedly great learning experience.
i have a big problem about advertising that i'll work for free; (as i dont really want to, just if an amazing opportunity comes and thats what it means, i'll make it happen). a girl came into our office the other day and one of the first things she said was that she'll work for free. i feel like this is common now a days and if anything makes you lose integrity and respect in the eyes of the employer. we looked at her portfolio after she left and it was meh; the fact that she would work for free only gave us a negative starting impression of her
Subsequently, a firm that looks at that name on your resume in great regard, overlooking other qualifications or work experience at a economically self-sustaining firm, might be bad.
i respect your disinterest in getting everyone's two cents' worth on eisenman as a person, architect, employer or whatever.
on the note of unpaid work though you're bound to get opinions, because it's a question seriously undermining the architectural profession. don't know what it's like in the us, but over here there's more than one country literally getting drained of its young architects (and many other young professionals for that matter), the reason being that unpaid intern work, which is standard in southern europe, with time has spilled over on to the first couple (in some cases quite many) of years post-graduation when supposedly people should want to be grown-ups and earn a salary. only they can't, because the "competition" is nowadays down to people offering their services for free to get a whichever job; they get it and go on living with their parents for way too long as their only option unless they're wealthy, which most people de facto are not.
in italy for example where this has been going on for a long time, the combined free work and brain drain is right now playing a central role in zero nativity, insufficient tax revenues for the state, no pensions to pay out to those who've worked 40-50 years and so on. there's no need to carry on naming all the downsides to a generation of un/underpaid highly educated people.
this culture when proliferated can bring a whole society to its knees. if we then go back to the point in case, the whole idea of working for little or no money while still an intern is closely affiliated with the lousy salary progression during a career in architecture that this field offers compared to any other one requiring a corresponding amount of time, effort and money spent on university education. same thing goes for the widely used concept of employers not paying overtime. mind you, i've worked for measly pay so i take my share of the blame too, having agreed to work for that kind of money. the moment that made me realize the complete absurdity of the whole thing was when my employer openly mocked me in front of other staff for earning so little. in his eyes there were i was either well-heeled and didn't care for a decent pay, or i was just a weakling that didn't have the guts to ask for one. either way i was worthy of little respect (much like what you yourself are pointing out in one of the above posts). needless to say i was out of the door the next day, but this was still the job i had depended on for an entire year of study.
you might not see it that way right now, but your decision whether or not to work for free right now has immediate repercussions on those who are already out of school and depend on a reasonable salary. presumably this will include also yourself in a few years. in a bigger picture there are consequences for both the profession and society as a whole. this already includes you.
btw, please don't feel this as being directed towards you as an
individual; rather it's about a general situation with your job pondering as a current example.
alucid - I should note that I did decline offers to work for free while in school for starchitect's. It was a matter of pride for me (I thought I was worth something, very good model building skills, beyond the design, which I knew I would not do much of). I chose a compromise between a semi-starchitect and got paid.
That said, I am now out of the profession and would/could never work in it again (in a traditional sense, I still design buildings). I do wish I had the "A" list on my resume. I had them as profs, but not employers.
So, as a momento/memory, it would have completed the picture and 3 months is nothing to even blink at.
I work for a starchitect- been doing it for a while.
Obviously, you know that you want to work for Eisenmann for free- crazy, but hey it's your life. One suggestion, he should be paying for your dinners if you are working late- a token gesture of humanity that I have not seen neglected anywhere that I have been (8+ years working). If you are good enough, and value yourself enough, i think that you could pretty much stick to that point- in the very least. NYC is expensive, so you will be living off a savings or your parents generosity- but having a free meal kicked in certainly helps.
BTW- we pay our interns. Not a lot, but enough to cover the very basics of living...
+BTW- working for Eisenmann for free in 1995- i get it- but 2008? I would suggest your free services would better help your portfolio if you went elsewhere...
"Yeah I'm not set on eisean at all, especially because he is washed up"
please be honest in your application/covering letter and tell him that you might be willing to work for him for free only because he is washed up. perhaps you might be willing to donate a kidneys to work for OMA since they're still slightly hip. this is not an opinion, by the way.
For their first major commission, Dunescape at P.S.1. MoMA, SHoP Architects used $30k of the $50k budget to pay the students who built it. The rest went to the materials. Now, I would say that firm is one of the most economically + design savvy firms around.
....ok, i suppose there could be a semantic difference between "wanting" to work for free and being "willing to, if it's the only way".
since by the very nature of free work you can not be forced by economic circumstances to agree to it, then all that's left to conclude is that you really want to work for eisenman so badly that you'd do it for zero pay. and then it would still almost seem like you d o want to, as you by no means after 5 years study actually have to do that in nyc in order to get interesting/valuable/cv-boosting work experience.
i know it all started with you asking for advice, but to all of the underpaid and overworked single/double/triple degree holders that inevitably will be reading this thread it's nonetheless pretty damn annoying to be advising on a matter based on the notion of free work. also - i know this is still beside the point - but i really would not work a single day for that pompous moron even if he did pay me.
i think the fact that the architecture industry is full of low paid long hour jobs absolutely sucks. hell, i need a life outside of architecture. to be healthy at the very least by sleeping enough. i want to have friends and a family and get some exercise too.
but if architecture is what you wanna do and the top of the avante-garde world is where you gotta be, you gotta deal with the system. you can't change the whole system by opting out of it. you can only change the system by going through it, rising to the top, and then using the influence you've earned to change it.
by choosing to not working for a great architect (however you choose to define that term based on your own values), you will be denying yourself the irreplaceable unparalleled experience that you can learn at these places. you don't want to take yourself out of the starchitect-begets-starchitect hierarcy and set yourself on the river of mediocrity just because of some moral inclination that you have to get paid for everything you do. you didn't get paid to be in school. same thing.
many of the best and brightest architects / academics i know have worked for eisenman. succeeding in architecture is about so much more than talent. you need to be exposed to the right ideas, know the right people, have the right lines on your resume, and have the perseverance and sense of logistics and timing that it takes to accomplish something great.
go work for eisenman, if what he does interests you. despite all the haters out there, he's one of the few who challenges us to think about architecture beyond the gratuitous formmaking and fetishization of materials that is overrunning the profession now. we can't forget that architect is, at its heart, a liberal art, and intellectual art. we can't let it become merely a craft.
Yossarian: "Let somebody else get killed".
Major Major: "But suppose everybody on our side felt that way."
Yossarian: "Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?"
eisenman is still hiring? Well would you really call bringing in interns for free hiring? I wonder where all these guys go in a depression....
I would assume they have vested well outside of architecture and will all be off on some exploration or architecture book writting venture. Who the hell needs slave interns for that. So jump on as fast as you can cause the country is in a major cool down.... but don't go out on a finacial limb just to hang in a major player office cause it is going to get you into someone elses door. I say this because time Christmas comes around, the whole fricking North East has the potential of being a fricking ice box....with renters not putting in enough fuel in the fuel tank and running out in the middle of the night. Oil companies only delivering to cash customers...electic rates
jumping thru the ceiling if that already hasn't happened. $75.00 for a bag of groceries not being a stretch. Buildings freezing up broken pipes, and you be working for free. Why the hell doesn't the AIA do something about this practice which should have gone out with the Civil War!
i like how he in that youtube-crit talks about fuller as "taking good things and turning them into shit" or something to that effect.
a friend of mine's take on practice vs academia comes to mind:
"i admire gehry for sticking to his guns and staying out of academia altogether. at least then he doesn't, unlike eisenman, both build AND teach crap".
I like Eisenman, whether he's a prick or not. i probably would never work for him (or anybody) for free, but then again I've never been offered the chance. I would say that the jury is still out whether or not he is completely a dinosaur. He is still somewhat relevant, although I might find it hard to work there without imaging what is was like back in the day.
really it's irrelevant what eisenman is or not, anyone could surely name hundreds of practices they wouldn't work for on the basis of design ethos, fame, personal chemistry or whatever. in whichever case i still just don't think free work is commendable, and neither employer nor employee (if in fact those terms apply to unpaid work arrangements) gain from it in a bigger context.
eisenman.
i have a possibly strong connection with eisenman's office and need to know whether i should push that connection or not. i would like to ask some questions to people that have worked there (for at least 3+ months, or gone through the summer intern program). i would be going for the summer intern program next summer. i would be going into my thesis (5th) year of undergraduate architecture with 5 years of architecture work experience, + a set of construction documents.
i know i'd be there till 1+ every morning. (how true is this?)
i know i'd be getting no pay. (i heard him say it in that interview that was on here, so i have to assume. if i'm wrong please let me know)
what do interns usually do? if it matters, undergrad interns?
what is the working environment like? what is the space like? what are the people like?
how big of an office is it? how many people?
on staying late, do they pay for dinners?
what time do you need to be in for work?
how common is working weekends (just saturday? both days?)
what is the overall working experience like (looking back?)
thank you for your time + thoughts
the guy is an asshole, a shitty architect and a douche bag...why would you want to work for him for nothing?
i thought it put the "i know" part of this post to get rid of posts like that. i dont need people to question my decisions. why work for zaha? why work for holl? why work for asymptote?
but thanks for your bias
i wouldnt work for Zaha or Asymtote of Holl either...
yep, seen it. you're not getting the hint :/
i do not want personal opinion of how eisenman sucks. because to some, he doesnt. that crit is retarded, but i'm not trying to study under him (that i would never do)
then don't post a question on a public forum.
i shouldnt post on a public (as if theres private...) forum because of trolls. okay. wait no, public forums are the best place for the widest range of people, and my hope is to find one that can actually answer the questions i'm asking, instead of giving me shit for asking them in the first place
mdler is no troll moron...he is just posting his opinion - if you do not like it...don't post the question...jesh - you know...freedom of speech and all that.
you may too soft skinned to work for a starchitect...that would be my assumption from you knee jerk whining. Maybe you will get to scrape human feces from the sidewalk like an intern did at Predock's while I was working there.
goodluck.
i only bend over when i choose to
that said, this thread is amusing me at least. still hoping for someone who is not uselessly posting their opinion in a thread where no opinion was asked for. these are not opinion questions. and neither of you have even tried to give an "opinionated" answer to the questions (which isnt even possible because there is no opinion about these, just fact that can only be known by someone that has gone through it), just bantering me for saying i may work for eisenman.
chris thank you for the first thoughtful post. i'm asking the questions to not be walking in a completely black tunnel, just dark grey.
Dude. It's 3 months. Don't overthink it.
i don't think that the fact that the man's architecture sucks should be overlooked here.
why don't you ask your "connection" all these questions and discuss it with him?
don't work for free
Based on the experience of a former roommate of mine's boyfriend:
what do interns usually do? if it matters, undergrad interns?
Built models. Nothing else.
what is the working environment like? what is the space like? what are the people like?
No comments on the space, but he liked the location in the city. The only people there with whom he had any significant interaction were all exactly like him: students, international, young, hopeful, inexperienced.
how big of an office is it? how many people?
Enough free interns to make a soccer team, at least.
on staying late, do they pay for dinners?
He didn't mention it. Doubtful.
what time do you need to be in for work?
I think it was 9am - after being there til midnight.
how common is working weekends (just saturday? both days?)
No such thing as weekends. Each day like the next.
what is the overall working experience like (looking back?)
He was glad he did it, but said it sucked. But he was still glad he did it - but it really, really sucked.
Note: After three months of work he got a T-shirt, so I guess you can't say he *actually* worked for free.
...and I'll just keep my opinion on the wisdom of working free for anyone to myself.
if you are going to put yourself through the 'hell' of working for Eisenman, you may as well choose someone who actually knows what they are doing (knows how to put buildings together)
I know many places (some even in NYC) where you will learn 100x what you would at Eisenman's, you will get paid, you wont work 100hrs a week, and they are nice
just because you can get a job their doesnt mean that you should
THIS IS MY OPINION
Get your name on your resume while you can, try to pick up something useful while there (I learned some super model building techniques at my first job with a well known architect). Then move on.
It'll be a well known name and it'll be a story you can bitch about for decades. Priceless.
bell: thank you very much for your extremely insightful and helpful post. it gave me a lot of points to discuss with my "connection" (my boss). thank you
going out of order here;
trace: thats my thinking. read on
mdler: what you said is where my head is at right now. i am at a point where i feel like i need to, but more importantly WANT to work for one of this huge names; i need to prove to myself that i can do that type of work. it is very, VERY hard to get a job at one of these large names as an undergrad student with a life. i applied to many "starchitect" firms and got to the last round for one, but didnt make the cut.
the reason why i am thinking more and more of eisenman (aside from the fact that i have a connection there) is that i am very conceptual in my design. i have been trying to find a firm that is well known, very conceptual, and is surviving. my ideal is tschumi or REX, but i have no connections there; i tried at both last summer and at the time REX wasnt hiring AT ALL and tschumi was a no :(. i want to go through the process of a starchitect intern, but i want to do it at a firm where i like the design (process at least). i have started looking at smaller firms (nARCHITECTS is one example, same story as REX though for this summer). ive worked at successful firms, ive worked at nice firms, ive never worked at something more.
so i'm trying to find a "big" (take that word very lightly and abstractly) firm, with a very recognizable name, that is conceptual. i almost feel that eisenman is overly conceptual to the point of where its arbitrary! the enemy!
sigh. so if anyone can recommend any other firms that you think i would be interested in, PLEASE let me know!; i really want to make next summer an unbelievable one in my architectural "career". but otherwise, thank you for the useful comments (the ones that have been)
#105
alucidwake
if you are willing to work for Eisenman for free (and can afford to) you may want to try to approcah other offices by telling them that you will work for free (I KNOW THAT THIS IN UN-ETHICAL) but it may be worth a try
also, if your work is very conceptual you may want to work for someone whos work is 180 degrees from what you are doing. You will probably learn a lot more about the profession this way (how to build WHICH I THINK IS IMPORTANT, how to run a business WHICH I THINK IS IMPROTANT, etc)
mdler: thats actually what i'm doing now. not out of choice, but by chance. it has been a very unexpectedly great learning experience.
i have a big problem about advertising that i'll work for free; (as i dont really want to, just if an amazing opportunity comes and thats what it means, i'll make it happen). a girl came into our office the other day and one of the first things she said was that she'll work for free. i feel like this is common now a days and if anything makes you lose integrity and respect in the eyes of the employer. we looked at her portfolio after she left and it was meh; the fact that she would work for free only gave us a negative starting impression of her
work construction...
I don't think a good learning experience would be gained from an architect who needs several unpaid interns to keep his business going.
Subsequently, a firm that looks at that name on your resume in great regard, overlooking other qualifications or work experience at a economically self-sustaining firm, might be bad.
It's good that you have passion and are not indifferent to what firm you work at- g luck
alucidwake -
i respect your disinterest in getting everyone's two cents' worth on eisenman as a person, architect, employer or whatever.
on the note of unpaid work though you're bound to get opinions, because it's a question seriously undermining the architectural profession. don't know what it's like in the us, but over here there's more than one country literally getting drained of its young architects (and many other young professionals for that matter), the reason being that unpaid intern work, which is standard in southern europe, with time has spilled over on to the first couple (in some cases quite many) of years post-graduation when supposedly people should want to be grown-ups and earn a salary. only they can't, because the "competition" is nowadays down to people offering their services for free to get a whichever job; they get it and go on living with their parents for way too long as their only option unless they're wealthy, which most people de facto are not.
in italy for example where this has been going on for a long time, the combined free work and brain drain is right now playing a central role in zero nativity, insufficient tax revenues for the state, no pensions to pay out to those who've worked 40-50 years and so on. there's no need to carry on naming all the downsides to a generation of un/underpaid highly educated people.
this culture when proliferated can bring a whole society to its knees. if we then go back to the point in case, the whole idea of working for little or no money while still an intern is closely affiliated with the lousy salary progression during a career in architecture that this field offers compared to any other one requiring a corresponding amount of time, effort and money spent on university education. same thing goes for the widely used concept of employers not paying overtime. mind you, i've worked for measly pay so i take my share of the blame too, having agreed to work for that kind of money. the moment that made me realize the complete absurdity of the whole thing was when my employer openly mocked me in front of other staff for earning so little. in his eyes there were i was either well-heeled and didn't care for a decent pay, or i was just a weakling that didn't have the guts to ask for one. either way i was worthy of little respect (much like what you yourself are pointing out in one of the above posts). needless to say i was out of the door the next day, but this was still the job i had depended on for an entire year of study.
you might not see it that way right now, but your decision whether or not to work for free right now has immediate repercussions on those who are already out of school and depend on a reasonable salary. presumably this will include also yourself in a few years. in a bigger picture there are consequences for both the profession and society as a whole. this already includes you.
btw, please don't feel this as being directed towards you as an
individual; rather it's about a general situation with your job pondering as a current example.
alucid - I should note that I did decline offers to work for free while in school for starchitect's. It was a matter of pride for me (I thought I was worth something, very good model building skills, beyond the design, which I knew I would not do much of). I chose a compromise between a semi-starchitect and got paid.
That said, I am now out of the profession and would/could never work in it again (in a traditional sense, I still design buildings). I do wish I had the "A" list on my resume. I had them as profs, but not employers.
So, as a momento/memory, it would have completed the picture and 3 months is nothing to even blink at.
I work for a starchitect- been doing it for a while.
Obviously, you know that you want to work for Eisenmann for free- crazy, but hey it's your life. One suggestion, he should be paying for your dinners if you are working late- a token gesture of humanity that I have not seen neglected anywhere that I have been (8+ years working). If you are good enough, and value yourself enough, i think that you could pretty much stick to that point- in the very least. NYC is expensive, so you will be living off a savings or your parents generosity- but having a free meal kicked in certainly helps.
BTW- we pay our interns. Not a lot, but enough to cover the very basics of living...
+BTW- working for Eisenmann for free in 1995- i get it- but 2008? I would suggest your free services would better help your portfolio if you went elsewhere...
nike = just do it
Sigh. Yeah I'm not set on eisean at all, especially because he is washed up, but i'm just trying to explore / find my options to do what I want to do
Seriously alucidwake, you'd have to be mad to work for eisenman. I don't care about your disclaimer posts, you'd have to be seriously mad.
"Yeah I'm not set on eisean at all, especially because he is washed up"
please be honest in your application/covering letter and tell him that you might be willing to work for him for free only because he is washed up. perhaps you might be willing to donate a kidneys to work for OMA since they're still slightly hip. this is not an opinion, by the way.
well if you're willing to work for free then talk to people you want to work for free for. hard to turn down free.
For their first major commission, Dunescape at P.S.1. MoMA, SHoP Architects used $30k of the $50k budget to pay the students who built it. The rest went to the materials. Now, I would say that firm is one of the most economically + design savvy firms around.
I really don't know how it cmame cross that I WANT to work for free; I just said that if I have to I'm wiling to, if it's the only way
....ok, i suppose there could be a semantic difference between "wanting" to work for free and being "willing to, if it's the only way".
since by the very nature of free work you can not be forced by economic circumstances to agree to it, then all that's left to conclude is that you really want to work for eisenman so badly that you'd do it for zero pay. and then it would still almost seem like you d o want to, as you by no means after 5 years study actually have to do that in nyc in order to get interesting/valuable/cv-boosting work experience.
i know it all started with you asking for advice, but to all of the underpaid and overworked single/double/triple degree holders that inevitably will be reading this thread it's nonetheless pretty damn annoying to be advising on a matter based on the notion of free work. also - i know this is still beside the point - but i really would not work a single day for that pompous moron even if he did pay me.
let's see.
i think the fact that the architecture industry is full of low paid long hour jobs absolutely sucks. hell, i need a life outside of architecture. to be healthy at the very least by sleeping enough. i want to have friends and a family and get some exercise too.
but if architecture is what you wanna do and the top of the avante-garde world is where you gotta be, you gotta deal with the system. you can't change the whole system by opting out of it. you can only change the system by going through it, rising to the top, and then using the influence you've earned to change it.
by choosing to not working for a great architect (however you choose to define that term based on your own values), you will be denying yourself the irreplaceable unparalleled experience that you can learn at these places. you don't want to take yourself out of the starchitect-begets-starchitect hierarcy and set yourself on the river of mediocrity just because of some moral inclination that you have to get paid for everything you do. you didn't get paid to be in school. same thing.
many of the best and brightest architects / academics i know have worked for eisenman. succeeding in architecture is about so much more than talent. you need to be exposed to the right ideas, know the right people, have the right lines on your resume, and have the perseverance and sense of logistics and timing that it takes to accomplish something great.
go work for eisenman, if what he does interests you. despite all the haters out there, he's one of the few who challenges us to think about architecture beyond the gratuitous formmaking and fetishization of materials that is overrunning the profession now. we can't forget that architect is, at its heart, a liberal art, and intellectual art. we can't let it become merely a craft.
Yossarian: "Let somebody else get killed".
Major Major: "But suppose everybody on our side felt that way."
Yossarian: "Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?"
eisenman is still hiring? Well would you really call bringing in interns for free hiring? I wonder where all these guys go in a depression....
I would assume they have vested well outside of architecture and will all be off on some exploration or architecture book writting venture. Who the hell needs slave interns for that. So jump on as fast as you can cause the country is in a major cool down.... but don't go out on a finacial limb just to hang in a major player office cause it is going to get you into someone elses door. I say this because time Christmas comes around, the whole fricking North East has the potential of being a fricking ice box....with renters not putting in enough fuel in the fuel tank and running out in the middle of the night. Oil companies only delivering to cash customers...electic rates
jumping thru the ceiling if that already hasn't happened. $75.00 for a bag of groceries not being a stretch. Buildings freezing up broken pipes, and you be working for free. Why the hell doesn't the AIA do something about this practice which should have gone out with the Civil War!
hey nobody said you could bring literature into this!
sorry i know...but someone informed me it needs to be an intellectual art so i thought i'd show money and books can be friends.
correction: insert "interest in" in front of money and books. just to not confuse what i likes with what i has.
you will not work past 8 and hardly on the weekends. The building is closed after 8 and weekends.
Never work for nothing, not even 'experience'
Eisenman is a twat of the highest order.
i like how he in that youtube-crit talks about fuller as "taking good things and turning them into shit" or something to that effect.
a friend of mine's take on practice vs academia comes to mind:
"i admire gehry for sticking to his guns and staying out of academia altogether. at least then he doesn't, unlike eisenman, both build AND teach crap".
Sorry bud, Gehry teaches too, he's was at Yale this past spring
o damnit...now there's two of them :)
ok apologies for that, should have checked my facts better!
eisenman sucks!
yay..am i part of the group now?
I like Eisenman, whether he's a prick or not. i probably would never work for him (or anybody) for free, but then again I've never been offered the chance. I would say that the jury is still out whether or not he is completely a dinosaur. He is still somewhat relevant, although I might find it hard to work there without imaging what is was like back in the day.
ks - point taken :]
really it's irrelevant what eisenman is or not, anyone could surely name hundreds of practices they wouldn't work for on the basis of design ethos, fame, personal chemistry or whatever. in whichever case i still just don't think free work is commendable, and neither employer nor employee (if in fact those terms apply to unpaid work arrangements) gain from it in a bigger context.
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