Working in an organization with more experienced architects is crucial to one's professional development. But, in this current job market, amid the pandemic, it has been difficult for many to land a promising appointment. And while the searching continues, professional growth can feel stunted. Without a mentor to teach, where does one turn for guidance? How can the jobless candidate continue on a path of growth despite this misfortunate dilemma? 

There are many ways to tackle downtime during this season. Reading biographies is one way to learn a lifetime worth of lessons. In this way, your mentors become endless and fully accessible. Obviously, this doesn't replace the one on one interaction with an actual human being. As an aspiring architect, there is much to be embraced from the biographies of creative individuals, their mistakes and failures, how they overcame them, and how you can take those lessons and apply them to your journey. Here are three recommendation that I think will provide powerful inspiration and insights specific to this time we find ourselves in.

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

The Wright Brothers by David McCullough is an excellent book. What many don't know about Wilbur and Orville Wright is that they were not the first to tackle human flight — they were the first to solve the problem. Here you find two brothers who prevailed over every traditionally educated engineer. With little money and no more than a high school education, the Wright brothers brought about an age of flight. And it was all achieved through experimentation, reading a ton of books, and pure determination.

Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King is a kind of dual biography. One the one hand it is a biography of a building, or more specifically, a biography on the construction of the part of a building — the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. One the other hand, it is an epic tale of Filippo Brunelleschi and his out-of-this-world genius in solving a structural problem that was seemingly impossible to achieve.

Today, the dome is still the largest in the world. This is a short book chronicling the twenty-eight years Brunelleschi spent solving the impossible puzzles of the dome's construction. Check it out.

El Croquis

Any issue of El Croquis will not disappoint. My favorite is the Glenn Murcutt issue. Here you'll find a publication filled with detailed drawings interviews with the architect about the projects featured within, essays, and more. If you ever wanted a focus study on an architect, this publication is one to offer a unique view not common in most printed and online resources.

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There are many books in the world and so this only provides a molecular-sized sample. Here is a nice balance of straight architectural reading and some narrative. Keep pursuing the job market, but in the midst of that, the introduction of some new mentors into your life may tap into that part of the self that is eager to progress forward faster than the world allows in our time.