Life of an Architect

If you’ve ever dreamed of starting your own design firm, maybe you’ve just graduated from school, perhaps you’ve worked for another firm and seen first-hand what not to do and decided it’s time to go out on your own, today is the show for you because today’s topic is “Starting a Design Firm”.

How does scale factor into the practice of architecture? For any architect, scale and proportion are two skills that appear to be the most challenging to master.

What exactly is leadership and what does it mean to be a leader? Leadership is thrust upon those who, through the strength of conviction and moral character, lead through personal example. 

Do you have a design culture in your office? Why is it that some firms have it and others don’t? A culture of design isn’t something that just happens, there has to be a plan, it needs to be cultivated, and even then, without the right sort of people in place, you might be fighting an uphill battle.

When an architect goes to work … what happens? Do they pull out a pen and sketch paper? Maybe they power up some hardware – quite possibly a bit of both. Ask and architect what they need to do their job and they’ll all give you different answers but we’ll give you the real scope on today’s episode … Architectural Tools

We are all familiar with the phrase “style over substance” but those words might mean something else to architects. Is this considered a negative concept in every circumstance? We discuss those notions in this episode.

We have special guest Marlon Blackwell, FAIA on the podcast today and if you are not intimately familiar with his work, I am excited to be in a position to share it with you. Marlon and I go back a long way and it seemed only fitting that we should finally ask him to be on the podcast.

For every architect and designer, there are objects out there that resonate for them in a profound manner and can even shape their design philosophies. These can be buildings, products – even materials – but no matter what you call them, they are "Objects of Design".

Today we are talking about the design process and how different that process is between residential projects and commercial projects. While you might think that this is a conversation about scale, budgets, and complexities, it's really about something quite different.

Architects are using technology more and more and with each passing day, more of this technology is available from the comforts of your cellphone or smart tablet. This list has been curated and categorized to provide the best mobile apps for architects.

A lot can happen in just a few weeks. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, business as usual is anything but … and Andrew and I felt like we should interrupt our regularly scheduled podcast to take some time and talk about working from home – something that we all are going to have to deal with for the foreseeable future. Since so many of the people we listen to this podcast are single or small office practitioners, we thought that instead of running our scheduled (and completed - DOH!) podcast episode – which was titled “A Culture of Design” and will be released a bit later in the year - that we should take this moment in time and talk a little bit about how the current climate is impacting our daily routines, our jobs, the basic stuff that for the vast majority of us, are the givens that help ground us. A bit of this is purely selfish on my part because I wanted to make a record of sorts of this particular moment in time - talk about what is happening to our daily lives in what is unquestionably unprecedented activities. We will also be talking about working from home – what that actually looks like – home office setups, multiple people all working from home, teaching classes remotely, thinking about what that might be like from both the teacher and the student side of things, along with some more mundane realities that we are having to deal with. I will go on record and say that I am not really a "work-from-home" fan. As an employer, I will concede that I don't think that the vast majority of people really do their best work when left completely to their own devices, a big part of that is based on my own behavior, but as an employee, I really feed off the energy and conversations that take place within the work environment. [Note: If you are reading this via email, click here to access the on-site audio player]  Traveling and Going to the Grocery Store [ 4:36 mark] Just about every part of our daily routines is being affected in ways that still don't make a great deal of sense to me. I'm not sure if it's hoarding behavior taking place, or something along the supply chain has been impacted (across the entire planet) but I don't know why it's so difficult to get your hands on some toilet paper. I was out of town for the week when most of the craziness took place where I live. I was in Northern California spending the week at a rental house in Sea Ranch (if you're not familiar with this landmark project, I've written about it in detail previously here: Sea Ranch, California) and from afar I watched more and more things close down and become unavailable. Friends were telling me about how everything in the grocery stores was gone and that by the time I get back into town all that will be left will be canned asparagus and potted meat. Luckily it wasn't that bad but there were limits put in place on the number of specific items you could purchase. Luckily, my wife and I do not exhibit hoarding personalities and most of the things on this restriction list were not an issue for us. Working from Home [ 15:12 mark] I would be interested to hear from people how their work from home situation is shaping up. Andrew and I recorded this episode on Sunday, March 22nd, and I have now spent 1 week working from home ... and my opinions on the matter have been profoundly impacted by this single week. I will say that my dogs LOVE having all of us at home all day. In the beginning, it was a bit overbearing - they wanted to be around me all the time and for them, they wanted me to pet them, throw the ball and play fetch, even a game of tug-of-war was not out of the question. On day one, I thought "Okay, I'll do some of this so you will leave me alone ..." They still aren't leaving me alone. Hopefully,

The process of preparing construction drawings has evolved from “What do we need to do to “What can’t we do?” Today we are going talking about construction drawing best practices in what is essentially creating the graphic instruction manual of constructing a building.

Architectural Technology is changing how architects work and what’s in today might be irrelevant and out of date by next week, but ignore these developments at your own peril. For even your average run-of-the-mill architect, technology is a way of life … but despite knowing this information, I am frequently amazed by just how amazing technology actually is and the role it plays daily in my work and my office.

So you’ve graduated from architecture school and received a university degree in architecture - so what happens next? What exactly does an architect do? What if you don’t want to be a designer, maybe you have interests in how buildings are detailed and built, the selection of materials and finishes, firm management … so many directions you could go and today we are going to talk about a bunch of them and take you Inside the Firm!

Finding the right sort of person who can help guide you through various stages of your career can be incredibly valuable and beneficial. Today we are talking about mentorship and what that means, what can make it great, why it doesn’t necessarily work, what you can do so that you might actually benefit from the experience, and what sort of relationship can make a mentor a great fit for you.