Advice to Future Architects

Architecture as a career is not an easy choice. One might even say that architecture chooses you. Like medical practice or journalism, acting or teaching, you can only excel at your craft by becoming involved with the clients and invested in the outcome.

I could quote the dreadful statistics on failed marriages and failed businesses for architects, but statistics can't be applied to all situations or all participants. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't. When you choose a career, though, you do place a foundation under who you are. You may not be that person in that career forever, but it will forever form who you become. If you love architecture and you nurture it, it can change you - make you think beyond what exists now and project into what might be. Even the most cynical architect is an optimist at heart, for we hold the inherent belief that the world can be made better - perhaps even that people can be made better - by creating an environment they aspire to live up to.

I knew I wanted to be an architect at the ripe old age of 8. Or an astronaut. I grew up in a small town with gaslights running down the main street. The town square still features its fountain of "Winkin Blinkin and Nod" along with the scattered memorials of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters who, for a short time, were soldiers - protecting this haven that I grew up in so that I could be free to be either an architect or an astronaut.

Growing up in a small town, I hadn't seen a building taller than our downtown hotel. I hadn't seen any paintings by Picasso, nor had I seen any great engineering marvels like the Hoover Dam. But something about my town - my town square, the public library, the old hotel - whispered "architecture".   Beyond creating a great monument to memorialize a particular designer or fashion of the time, architecture is about anchoring people to a place and giving them a sense that they belong somewhere - that they can make not just a place in the world, but a home.

Architecture is a brave choice that will require sacrifices. The future ahead will be insecure. The people closest to you may never understand what you do or why. You will come to hard choices - between your design principles and your client's desires - sometimes between your moral principles and your security. As architects, you may be faced with these personal tests more often than others and you must choose wisely and honorably. We become better people - better designers - when circumstances force us to find the high road over the mountain.