Feast Day 2013: You are Unlimited

Today the Patron Saint of Architecture celebrates three years of helping bring inspiration and creativity to the forefront of what we do as architects.  What started as a personal need to affirm that architecture could and should be so much more than the professional opportunities that I was experiencing has now become a worldwide network of people who share that same purpose.  Each year, I build on the original intent and expand the content offerings; going from this blog to a facebook page, Pinterest account and, in this past year, a book.  As I challenge myself to experiment with new media and outreach efforts, I hope to not only build a community of creatives, but to encourage all of us to stretch outside of our comfort zone. 

I’ve come to realize that the comfort zone is a pretty deceptive place.  It’s what we know.  So we operate within a set of self-imposed constraints that limit our thinking about what’s possible.  Many of these constraints come from our education and professional experiences, and have permeated our understanding about what it means to practice architecture.  That’s why this year’s novena will be Shattering the Meme.  We’ll spend nine weeks exploring things about the profession of architecture that we just assume “have” to be that way and work to stop accepting the limiting premise of each one. 

In conjunction with this novena, I am launching my first ever series of teleclasses.  Based on my book, Career Crisis, which launched in April, the teleclasses begin next week with a free introductory session.  I am excited to bring the theme of applying your passion and purpose meaningfully to your career alive in an interactive way.  It’s one thing to read something, but nothing compares to actually being able to work through issues in a more direct way.  As architects, we often feel that we can and should be able to do it all, from graphic design to marketing to management, so it is natural for us to  think we can be our own coaches as well.  But coaching by its very nature is not a DIY endeavor. A coach can help you to understand your unique situation in a whole different way.  You need someone to encourage you to think beyond what you think is possible and challenge you achieve things that you really want (because that's the scary stuff you won't ever push yourself to do).  Someone who will tell you when you are allowing yourself to get distracted by being “too busy”  or when you are losing focus. 

You can begin to experience what it's like to work with a coach in the teleclasses, where we will spend an hour on each career theme and also do some individual “laser coaching,” where I will take questions from participants and provide targeted advice live on the call. 

If you want more, you can always work with me one on one in my career coaching program, which is a three week long intensive process.  I’m also pleased to announce a new coaching offering this year:  I Need a Quickie is specifically tailored to architects who really want to seek out coaching, but are still afraid to invest in themselves in this way.  While nowhere near as intensive as a coaching program, this new offering will let you buy an hour of one on one time with me to talk about career issues important to you.  I’m hoping that by offering this bridge to coaching, many of you will see how valuable it really is to work with me or another coach to up your game.  Wherever you are in your career, however much or little you have accomplished, you can always set your sights higher and achieve even more. 

We kicked off last year with the Change the World Novena, where I profiled architects who have taken it upon themselves to make the world a better place through the built environment.  Many of you viewed those architects as people who were somehow different from you.  You thought, “What they’re doing is great, but I can’t do that.  Who am I to think I can change the world?”  This year I’m not accepting that excuse- you are a gifted, creative, person, or you wouldn’t be an architect.  Who are you not to use that talent?  Get unstuck and shatter all those memes that are convincing you otherwise!

The Limiting Beliefs of Architects

As a profession dedicated to making our clients’ vision a reality, we do a lousy job of realizing our

vision for our own careers. Maybe that’s because so few architects have taken the time to have a career vision. They think they do, because they have embraced the thinking of their teachers, mentors, co-workers and friends. It’s a surprisingly pessimistic and monolithic point of view for a profession that prides itself on its creativity. As I was working on my book, and thinking about my career coaching sessions over the last few years, I realized time and again how much of the problem we have in getting fulfillment from our careers comes from limiting beliefs. These beliefs are so deeply a part of our “architect culture” that we don’t even recognize them. I teach people how to realize their passion, and the biggest challenge I encounter when working with them are these experiential lessons which are reinforced throughout our careers unless we break the pattern:

Competition is the path to success
We are primed from our days in the studio during college to compete with one another. To believe that there is a winner, and by default, losers. The RFP and interview process underscore this idea, leading firms to undercut one another in a race to the bottom. This commoditizes our work, which causes the design process and resulting building to have less value to both the client and society as a whole. It is a mindset of lack, believing that there is only so much pie to go around, and we better do whatever it takes to get our piece. It leads us to settle for less than we deserve in terms of compensation and design effort, to focus on bringing service instead of true innovation.
Danger of this belief: you feel your time has no value.
Overcome it by thinking differently about what you do and why. Don’t accept the premise of winners and losers, instead focus on the unexpressed needs you see in the situation and how you are uniquely qualified to meet them.

It’s fame or shame
I recently read an article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, where he makes the incredibly profound statement, “If you know it will work it isn’t creative.” How many firms actually embrace a culture of experimentation? Even the ones that do have a pretty low threshold for failure. No one thinks that a scientist working in the lab on experiment after experiment, each result building on the knowledge to improve the next experiment is a loser because it may take years, even decades to discover something. But in our “creative” profession, we grovel with our tail between our legs whenever the client or contractor finds fault with us. Paradoxically, we are always looking for the project and opportunity that will be our “big break,” while secretly stewing over the successes of our competition.
Danger of this belief: you are afraid to take risks.
Overcome it by taking a step back from the everyday steps in the process and start to look at the big picture. Ask why not more often and don’t be afraid to have, then fully vet, big ideas.

Being provocative means you are smart
No, it likely means you’re an out of touch pompous ass, who’s had a few brilliant ideas. Our “upbringing” as architects tends to reward those who are unconventional just for the sake of being unconventional. Maybe because we buy into that fame or shame mentality so much. The provocateur is usually trying to overcome the conditioned risk adversity by putting so much out there that people will start to feel that they are unenlightened clods trapped in conventional thinking if they shut down the ideas. Unfortunately, this approach only reinforces a negative stereotype and is rooted less in a willingness to help people think differently about their needs than it is about the provocateur’s desire to get attention.
Danger of this belief: solving the problem is not as important to you as making a statement.
Overcome it by investing more insight into your effort. I believe that big ideas are not only important but necessary. However, the idea needs to have relevance to the situation at hand and be tied to solving a problem. Even more important the big idea needs to feel inclusive and allow others on the design or user group team to build upon it.

You can’t get rich and be an architect
Oh, look how hard you’re working, you poor burned out thing. Procrastinating out of exhaustion until the rush of adrenaline at the eleventh hour gives you that flash of brilliance you need to triumphantly complete the task. This reinforces a competitive culture, where burning the candle at both ends is a badge of honor. There is a kind of nobility in being the misunderstood artiste engaged in a valiant fight against the system. The truth: All nighters were a bad idea back in school and they are an even worse idea once you enter the working world. Vision and clarity don’t visit the exhausted. What’s more, if you are working long, crazy hours, you likely are going off on your own instead of collaborating.
Danger of this belief: you believe that individual effort matters more than collaboration
Overcome it by working smarter. Engage your team both in and out of house. If someone else can do a task even 80% as well as you can, it’s worth delegating it to them. Be a mentor and seek out mentors of your own. You don’t have to do this alone, and the end result will be better than if you burn yourself out trying.

Our profession desperately needs to become a lot more introspective. We need to reposition ourselves for the future like we mean it if we want the relevance we so desperately claim to seek. So as you look over these limiting beliefs (and we are all guilty of all of them to some degree), ask yourself, “what’s holding you back?”
For a more in depth look at how you are limiting yourself and strategies to fearlessly pursue the career you really want, check out Career Crisis.  Let me know what you think and how it helps you unbind your creativity.

Of the People: A Culture Speaks

Lest you think you can only change the world as an architect by designing or building something, in week six of the Change the World Novena, I bring you the story of architect as ethnographer. 

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know how important I think it is for buildings to support the social and cultural values and activities of their occupants. My friend and classmate at Carnegie Mellon, Will Riehm and I spoke recently about the fascinating research he has been doing on the study of design as an expression of cultural identity in the Acadian culture. His studies of the blended mix of race and language in pre-Civil War Louisiana led him to apply for and win a Delbert Highland Fellowship to study the culture at its source in western Africa. His six week visit to the Sen Gambia region between Senegal and Gambia provided some eye-opening insights into the past and future of place-making (read all about this on his blog

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What Will had noticed in his previous research was that most of the architectural writing he had encountered on African Colonialism lacked an ethnic content- it was often oversimplified, factually incorrect, and insensitive to the user group due to a need to impose Western theories about building on a non-Western culture. His trip to Africa allowed him to see buildings in ethnographic context, understand how people use them, and discuss thoughts on the building trends he observed. He also took the time to seek out academics at two different schools to talk about the architecture education process in Africa. “I think we do a lot of projection onto Africa based on what we think they should do,” says Will. “We should listen, not impose.” Some things he learned:

A family outside a traditional mud hut
on their compound

Sustainable is a relative term. In the Gambia, it means permanence of structure, the ability for a building to sustain itself. Sustainable technologies refer to building systems that have a lasting aspect to them.

IPD may end up being driven from emerging economies. In African design schools, the focus in on building systems and how they are put together. Students learn from early on how to work as an integrated team with craftsmen and engineers. African design schools believe that the traditional Western model for planning, design and construction is too lengthy, inefficient, and lacking in meaningful user input. “Their need to un-silo the planning, design and construction processes is allowing them to leapfrog us with new issues related to urban development. I don’t think that they’ll end up having ‘architects’ as we understand them,” Will muses. Instead, the traditional focus on specialized craftsmen will expand.

Design should be accessible to the common person. “Everyone knows how to build and what things cost,” he says. People often build their own living structures, or play some part in their construction. There also is a very different attitude toward the realization of a project. The network is more important than the individual, and during what can be a very long process of construction (with stopages as funds run out), a property owner will allow others in his or her village to have access to the land for grazing or planting, use of the building shell during lulls in construction, and even access to land after the home is built and occupied.

Issues based urban design will eclipse traditional planning. In Janjanbureh, a city that was the old colonial capital, there is a web/node organization of streets connecting different types of commodities to markets (nodes). Streets are lined with shops and people live in organic walled compounds. There is no true urban planning, as development outpaces infrastructure. In this environment, the drivers of place are security (including food security as people need to buy non-perishable items at stable prices), access to healthcare (clinics), and roads and infrastructure. Will noted a surprising lack of of reverence for the historic colonial buildings because they were replicas of Western architecture and did not resonate with the population. This was a huge contrast from writing that had linked African colonialism to the Acadian identity.

Materiality is a hierarchy of its own. Traditional structures in this part of Africa are made of Ruhn palm, whose fibrous strands are used as structural members. Bamboo or palmetto fronds are woven and bound to create the fabric for a tensile structure. Sometimes, this is finished off with a mud plaster. However, Will observed an “upgrading” of this process to express sustainability: From the traditional roof framing with central tension ring, people would substitute walls of mud blocks, then concrete blocks, mahogany wood framing and finally, steel and corrugated metal with a concrete block interior finished with cement plaster.

Interestingly, a trip that began with a desire to understand the architecture of identity of African colonialism turned the mirror on Western design practices themselves. The architecture of West Africa is a study in diversity and integration, what best serves the population’s needs in terms of sustainability, accessibility and materiality. This has led Will to hypothesize how the architecture of this culture can lead to a new approach to design in general.

He will be further exploring the concept of “Just in Time Design” with his colleagues in Africa, deriving a rapid delivery prototype based on tradesmen and the way that their skill sets inform how things get built. He is planning to assemble a design lab here in the US that involves hands on construction to encourage students to think differently about the built environment in terms of scale, ease of construction, and purpose. He’s also interested in organizing a research outpost in the Gambia to continue to study ways that this vernacular architecture can inform the practice of architecture. As more and more countries adopt Western design methods, there is a globalization of style that occurs that stamps out local culture. Will believes that his study of ethnographic impacts as a way to gain insight into one of the last vernacular styles of architecture on the planet will eventually help to inform how and why we choose to build at all.

William Riehm joined the faculty of  the Interior Design Program of the College of Architecture, Art, and Design at Mississippi State University in 2011 after over 15 years of practicing architecture and planning in New Orleans, Louisiana. He holds degrees in architecture, urban planning, and interior design from Carnegie Mellon, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, respectively. His research interests include historic material culture, community development, and issues of professional practice. Most recently, Mr. Riehm was awarded a Delbert C. Highlands Fellowship of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Architecture for travel and study in The Gambia.

The Big Write Off

Cities are cauldrons of innovation and creativity, but misperceptions and bad press often relegate the most exciting movements to the shadows.  In week four of the Change the World Novena, we look at the role that architects can play in expressing the dynamic culture of a place to residents and regionalists alike.

It’s easy to be down on your rust-belt hometown.  Once-great cities of the Midwest have been brought to their knees by demographic shifts, the post-industrial economy and brain drain.  Or have they?  Jennifer Coleman, an architect, entrepreneur and lifelong resident of Cleveland, Ohio isn’t about to give up on her hometown just yet.  She has spent her career as a champion for revitalization, working at a grassroots and city leadership level to help Cleveland shine.

Cleveland has been working on urban redevelopment for a number of years, but many of the textbook solutions of the past decades such as sports and retail venues didn’t have a deep or lasting enough effect. Jennifer views the most positive change to happen in the last five years as the transition of the urban core.  “It went from being perceived as a business center to a place to live and a viable neighborhood,” she says.  “Twenty years ago really saw only one area, the Warehouse District as an example of a multi-use neighborhood, the rest of downtown was still business-based and experiencing tenant flight to the suburbs. The potential for a vibrant downtown was visible, but we did not really have a plan to bring it to fruition, other than continue seeking big projects like sports complexes and museums. While the Gateway project/stadiums built in the 1990’s brought more downtown, they did not produce a 24 hour city. Downtown instead became a place to visit for specific events and then go home.  We’re now focusing on livability issues in lieu of building big projects by looking at creating public spaces that enrich the life of downtown visitors, workers and residents.” 

There has also been a shift in urban design attention to the experience of place as a coherent and rich sequence of events with attention to traffic and circulation issues.  The intent is that the streets and open spaces such as Public Square and the Mall not be merely a place to pass through, but destinations that provide a focal point for surrounding development.  “When big projects that are currently being planned can plug into a larger urban infrastructure instead of relying on project based responses- this is a paradigm shift. Alternative transportation (pedestrian, bikes, public transit) and enjoying the trip is also being emphasized.”

Jennifer’s many years on City Boards and Commissions as well as her experience in private practice have given her perspective on redevelopment from both the design, development, and public policy point of view.  Some insights she shares with others who are interested in making a difference in revitalizing their cities:

Play to your strengths Every city has its unique characteristics and by expressing them, the culture of that place is also expressed, further enriching the experience of inhabiting it.  “Our physical and environmental potential and rich culture and history are unique to Cleveland.  Every city has its stories, but our stories are pretty cool. We tend to forget them.”  Jennifer’s City Prowl project is one way she is helping people to understand the history and culture that are part of the places they pass by every day.  “Our walkability and compactness and rich institutional stock are all within arm’s reach of the core.  Cleveland’s urban center includes the amenities of Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River. Strong neighborhoods close to the urban core have been redeveloping at a faster pace than the core and their distinctive character is now trickling into the core.  In addition to its walkability, our core has good transit connections, as well as rich historical character.  The city does not need to acquire land to revitalize because we are acting on plans that are in some cases 200 years old.”  However, Jennifer also feels that redevelopment is challenged by another cultural characteristic, “The temptation to sell ourselves short- a collective inferiority complex that holds us back from making big plans- fear of failure.  It’s the entreprenurial spirit that made Cleveland great in its hey day and will make it great again.”   

Form strategic alliances One of the most most successful neighborhood/district/projects Jennifer points to took place at the Cleveland State Universty (CSU) campus on the east side of downtown. The decision of CSU to engage with the downtown fabric in lieu of remaining a self-contained campus as they underwent a major campus expansion has opened up what used to be perceived as a barrier between downtown and midtown.  “Their transformation has created a template for our other urban institutions. Case Western Reserve University, located just east of downtown at University Circle,  is now adopting this mind set for their expansion/renovation projects with other hospitals & schools looking at  updating and integrating their urban campuses.”

Seek and use the insights of the average citizen  “I’d love to see a civic urban core universal concern- a “department of visibility” to make citizens more aware.  It can be very difficult for the average citizen to be aware of what’s going on and the best way to participate in the process,” Jennifer notes.  “The county right now is doing a great job of being more transparent and encouraging interaction.”  On the subject of whether change necessarily needs to be championed from the grass roots, Jennifer felt that interventions can equally be successful from a ‘ground up’ or ‘trickle down’ start. “Cleveland’s biking community is a great example of a grass roots group that has organized and mobilized to making biking safer and accessible to all citizens, from working with City Hall on the Complete Streets ordinance as well as reaching out to the community on various projects and education initiatives. Our mayor has committed to the public square and mall projects and really made them happen.”  Jennifer also believes that cities and civic leaders need to work at channeling the input of interested citizens, “There is a large movement of young people into urban cores because living in the city is a quality of life issue that they believe in.  They bring with them a new concept of city living which includes involvement. Many of the 40+ group are passionate about creating a vibrant core, but weren’t organized and cultivated as leaders as the younger citizens are now. I think the young people's enthusiasm for the city is spreading to their more established, suburban-dwelling older peers."

Set yourself up for success When I asked Jennifer what she thought needed to happen to produce the most transformational change, she championed further development of public spaces, but with an interesting caveat, “We need to teach people how to interact with the city.  Clevelanders are not used to grand public spaces.  It’s important to make sure that we have adequate programming with them and that it is easy for people to book the space for events.  We also need to promote better wayfinding and ease of getting around the city with more easily accessible creature comforts.”

As Jennifer illustrates, architects can play a leadership role in development through their willingness to participate in civic organizations and serve as appointed members of boards and commissions.  They can also be vigilant stewards of cultural treasures and be advocates for preservation and restoration.  One of Jennifer’s favorite Cleveland stories is the saving of the grand theaters in Playhouse Square in the 1970s. “They were literally setting up the wrecking ball to raze them for a parking lot, but concerned citizens intervened. Our theater district is one of the city’s, and nation’s treasures and the saving of them and their subsequent restoration, which continues to the present, was a main catalyst to out downtown renaissance.”

Architect and entrepreneur Jennifer Coleman has over 24 years experience in the field of architecture. Her company, Jennifer Coleman Creative LLC, is dedicated to improving life in the city through smart design. She is also the founder and CEO of CityProwl, a company producing urban walking-tours that can be downloaded from the internet to digital media players for self-led tours. An avid civic volunteer, she serves on the boards of LAND Studio, the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. She is Chair of both the Cleveland Landmarks Commission and Downtown/Flats District Design Review Committee and was appointed to the Mayor’s Group Plan Commission in 2010. Ms. Coleman holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Cornell University. She is a 2002 American Marshall Memorial Fellow and was featured in both the 1998 Crain’s Cleveland Business 40 under 40 class and Kaleidoscope Magazine’s 40/40 Club of 2002. She was Inside Business Magazine’s 2003 Business Volunteer of the Year. Jennifer lives with her husband, architect August Fluker and son, Cole, in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood.

I Am Not a Waitress

I have been absent.  Busy.  Eating too much pizza and not enough green vegetables.  The truth is, I’ve been feeling sapped.  The creative brain can often operate on hyper overdrive with more ideas flooding in that we can process.  We embark on myriad projects stretching ourselves in too many different directions.  My ambitious novena project has proved more difficult than I’d imagined to execute as finding then coaxing interviews out of built environment champions from all over the country has proved to be a bit like herding cats (you know who you are out there).  I’d like to also blame the flurry of events in my 3D life for why I have not blogged more in recent months (real estate crises, hectic work schedule, launching feng shui business, family matters), but this blog is about 3D life, not escaping it, so that’s not a good excuse either.  While I still feel guilty about not posting at my usual weekly pace, I’ve also come to realize that sometimes you just need...time.  We cannot flog ourselves into a creative frenzy, producing on-demand delights for the pleasure of others.  In short, I am not a waitress, and neither are you.  As creatives, we respond to, synthesize and process information to solve problems, but we will fail every time we try to follow orders.

I was recently reminded of this at a client meeting.  Because I am a healthcare architect, many of the people I work with are physicians.  Brilliant, worldly, folks who often themselves have a passion for the arts and architecture.  Certainly people who are used to speaking up and being the authority.  In this particular meeting, the person in question was sure that she had the answer, suggesting it in the meeting and even pulling me aside later to press her point.  I personally always like to think through and interpret what people have to tell me about space because I can often gain a great deal of insight on how to best solve the problem.  However, in this case, we’d already explored that path and the suggestion had more cons attached to it than pros.  I bristled inwardly at being told how to do my job.  I marveled at the audacity and confidence of this individual at the same time I wondered why as architects we so often demur.  Those that don’t are deemed “arrogant”  and “difficult”  and had better have a hell of a lot of talent on their side to make up for the fact that no one really likes them.  It led me to want to explore further the fine line between creativity and collaboration, between clarity and conformity and when it all degrades to just serving up a requested old favorite from the menu.

Let’s start with a round of intention and purpose
If you don’t know what you want, there is no way you can get it (or recognize it when you have).  While we often think that pushing ourselves to work harder is the key to success, the real key is your passion for what you do. This passion is contagious and will fuel any project and actually foster more collaboration that being a sycophant ever will.  As my yoga teacher likes to say- “if it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it.”  Truly words to live by, yet so many of us are caught up in life’s compulsories to the point that we forget what all those things were a prerequisite for. 

Next course: time and space 
While we often think that our best ideas come out of the pressure of the last minute, they are made possible by the fact that during periods of relaxation, something we negatively label as procrastination, we subconsciously form links between our problem and seemingly unrelated things out in the world.  If you can’t focus, there’s probably a reason and no amount of time at your desk will improve that.  The mind at play can recharge and see problems from new angles while the mind under pressure and a heavy workload reverts to reconstituting the last successful idea.

Send those negative thoughts back to the kitchen
The devil you know can be mighty seductive.  No matter how much we complain about all the things holding us back in life, we have a laundry list of excuses for why we can’t let them go.  These are your fears and they have no place in the successful outcome of anything.  Fear of failure prevents you from making bold moves, or causes you to sabotage the ones you do make too soon, leaving projects unfinished.  Fear of disapproval prevents you from voicing your thoughts or being an advocate for the expertise you have when you are challenged.  Fear of losing control makes us inflexible idea-hoarders, unable to collaborate.  When you play it safe, you stay stuck in a comfortable rut, all the while telling yourself you are making a wise choice (nice job, inner critic). 

Finish it off with a nice routine
When your creative process becomes automatic, you don’t question it anymore.  That makes it infinitely less likely that others will question you either.  Being creative is a constant work in progress.  You have to nurture your creativity for it to blossom.  Just like that never ending chore of cleaning the kitchen, creativity requires a daily investment of your time, and things quickly become a mess after a day or two of neglect.  Get in the habit of feeding your soul by making rest, exercise, and a ritual of creative tasks a non-negotiable part of your day.

Being an architect is nothing like waiting tables. We are in the business of providing our clients with something they don’t have today, of working with them to shepherd a vision into a built reality.  To do that, we are going to have to expand beyond literally writing down a list of criteria to satisfy. Our purpose in the design process is to work with our project team and clients toward defining the right problem and developing an innovative way to solve it, not delivering the daily special.

Lost in the Trees on Wayfinding

I recently toured a newly-completed hospital and asked the architect who designed it about his firm’s approach to wayfinding.  He rattled off a series of textbook things they had done; a single point of entry, color/art themed elevator lobbies, views of the front entrance from the main point of arrival on every floor, color and art themes for department entry desks -  in other words, not nearly enough.  While I had noticed all of these elements and had no argument that they were viable wayfinding moves, I still felt disoriented in the facility.  Which way to go was not intuitive and the landmarks provided were only for major destination points, like the elevators, then I was on my own.  Even though I was being guided through the facility on a tour, I felt like I might have trouble if I got left behind and had to find my own way back.  How much more, then would an anxious patient or family member feel disoriented?

Even brand new greenfield buildings like this one suffer from deep floor plates and hallways that snake around, departments that are organized somewhat like mazes and lots and lots of walking to get to your destination.  It’s time for us to stop thinking that a few grand gestures to the idea of wayfinding are enough and start building our design around it as an infrastructure.

Many arrival points should converge at a single destination.  So often, we design fantastic front doors that open into amazing lobbies, forgetting how few of patients and visitors actually arrive this way.  What we think is a single point of entry in fact is not.  Most are coming from a parking structure that connects to the building at a point other than the main lobby.  Still more may be entering via an outpatient area or the emergency department.  Especially if the floor plate has morphed over time, these points of entry can be very remote from one another.  Creating a main circulation spine is important in order to link all of these entry points and help visitors to cognitively map the facility.   A single concourse similar to airport arrival gates that has drop off, but more importantly proximal parking along its length and immediate access to either a department or vertical transportation (which offers immediate floor access to a department) is critical to reducing distances and getting people oriented.

Design can’t stop at the public realm.  How many times have you entered a gorgeous lobby only to have your final destination be a clinic that couldn’t be more bare bones and, well, clinical in its appearance?  Patients staff and family all appreciate the lobby, but what would really make a difference is to have the clinical areas where they spend the bulk of their visit have that same attention to materiality, circulation hierarchies and amenity.  Just because you have arrived at the front door of your destination doesn’t mean that all wayfinding bets are off.  You still have to navigate this area, and you shouldn’t need an escort to find your way back out.

Getting to your destination should not be a vision quest.  Especially at large institutions, the sheer amount of walking from point A to B is staggering.  One institution I know of offers free parking for the first hour in their garages, which was laughable when it could take over 10 minutes just to get from your car to your final destination. At least at the airport they have people movers and those little carts.  In hospitals, you have to walk. For able-bodied me, this is an annoyance, for the elderly and disabled, it’s an obstacle.  For staff, it’s ridiculous- a waste of time and energy.  Being in a healthcare setting should be restorative not exhausting.  Think about how you organize departments, to minimize travel from one task/treatment area to another and about how you organize the facility to minimize travel times for joint clinics, and other modes/therapies.  You might want to consider having more multi-purpose or procedure rooms as well as larger workrooms for staff to allow services to come to the patient at a single point of care.  Healthcare institutions have to seriously factor distance into the equation and stop taking a “that’s the way it is” attitude towards expansion plans that increase travel distances or additions that create circuitous pathways.

 

I’ve discussed in a previous post on wayfinding that signage is no substitute for creating spaces that provide landmarks, zones, and mental cues to destination.  However, these wayfinding elements alone won’t fix the problem of bad spatial sequencing or poor adjacencies.  Wayfinding needs to be part of the conceptual planning of any new project, and may cause the scope of work to be tweaked to provide the most effective layout.  Until we embrace this simple fact, healthcare spaces will continue to overwhelm and confuse the people who use them-an opportunity to develop responsive design that is simply lost.

Jump: A Vertical Path to Design Genius

I remember as an architecture student treading through the crushing hours of work thinking that once I graduated and started work, that things would be easier.  "Once you leave at the end of the workday," I reasoned, "you're done."  Oh how misguided I was.  But not for the reasons you might think.  Sure, clients can be unpredictable and deadlines can loom large.  But really, it's about the quest to improve yourself that keeps the line between work and life so fuzzy, even occasionally unbalanced.  I recently listened to an excellent presentation by Joshua Foer for the 99% entitled Step Outside Your Comfort Zone and Study Yourself Failing about the pitfalls we all encounter in our quest to do great things.  Certainly none of us sets out to be mediocre.  However, the day to day effort of meeting deadlines and being productive can leave no room for visionary thinking.  Unless you make room, that is. 

Foer talks about what separates experts from the rest of the pack and how reach beyond something he terms the “OK Plateau,” that place where we are good enough that we can put ourselves on autopilot regarding a set of tasks.  It was this OK Plateau that I was misguidedly longing to reach because I felt overburdened and overwhelmed by the challenges of architecture school.  But life on the Plateau is, well, boring.  The prospect of an entire career of that is bleak beyond words.  If you are feeling discontent with your career, it’s most likely that you’ve been stranded on that Plateau a little too long, for whatever reasons.  It’s time to jump:

An architects work is never done
No matter how many awards you win or celebrated you become, you are only as good as your last project.  True experts never allow themselves to get in a rut, they constantly challenge themselves to push beyond their comfort zone and explore new aspects of design, whether is experimenting with new materials, technologies or paradigms. They earn new credentials and don’t need AIA or State licensure requirements to seek out continuing education.

Find mentors for your whole person
No one is an expert in the exact same set of skills as another person.  Who you are, the unique perspective you bring to being an architect, needs to be nurtured as much as your more stereotypical skills.  This is why you need to cultivate expertise in all the facets of life that spark your passion.  Get in touch with your inner polymath.  What dimensions can an architect who is also a potter, sculptor and master chef bring to a project vs. one who is a hiker, photographer and karate blackbelt?  What about one who is also a certified nutritionist and has a degree in psychology?Scientific evidence has shown that you actually feed you creativity by indulging in a diverse set of interests.  A trip to the art museum, or the football stadium,  will do more for your next project crunch than spending four more hours hunched over your computer drawing.  It makes you far more interesting at cocktail parties, too.

Take yourself seriously
Architects are often accused of being pompous, looking down their over-designed glasses with disdain at the mere mortals they suffer to have around them who “just don’ get it.”  That’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about really believing that what you have to offer the world is so important that you never stop finding ways to make things better.  Don’t just design because it feels right, prove that it is right, never stop researching and testing your ideas about how people use space.  Study the people, the micro-culture, the tasks they perform, the preconceptions you all are bringing to the problem solution that you should question and perhaps throw out.  Finally, just like any good science experiment, never stop analyzing your outcomes. What worked (and how could it have worked better)? What did not perform as expected and why?  What new problems emerged through your design solution?  If you need to bring in someone else to help you evaluate your performance do so.  This can be as simple as inviting another member of your firm to do a postmortem for you, or as complicated as hiring and outside expert.  Then, listen to their criticism and use it to make yourself an even better architect.

True experts do not fear failure, they fear stagnation.

Mentoring and Modeling: What Architects can Learn from Montessori

Both role-model and tutor, mentorship is an awesome task.  We all want a mentor, and certainly flatter ourselves that it would be great to mentor someone else.  But what does that really mean?  Having sent my daughter to Montessori school, one definition I would offer is the concept of re-teaching.  According to the precepts of is founder, Maria Montessori, teachers are guides and classrooms are set up with children at three different grade levels.  Children master a skill by having it introduced by the teacher an then re-teaching it to their peers.  Passing on their newly-acquired knowledge enables the child-teacher to learn as much as the one receiving the lesson by reinforcing the previously learned concepts.  What a beautiful thought: to teach is to learn.  Through learning comes mastery, through mastery comes confidence, and through confidence comes leadership.  And so it is with mentoring.

We are all learners
Whether apprentice or master, we never stop learning.  Implicit in this is the idea that everyone has something to teach.  Even that intern. By drawing out the knowledge of the person you are mentoring, you help them to better understand themselves, what they know, and what matters to them. This allows you to coach them in pursuing activities and professional roles that will lead to their fulfillment.  It also allows the mentor to get a better understanding of his or her own professional values, and to question established ways of doing thing by asking “why.” Learning is a lifelong mission of acquiring knowledge and categorizing it in a way that makes sense and is useful to us. Growth and change are requirements for relevance.

Mentoring is not a relay race 
So often, we view mentoring purely as knowledge sharing, a ritual passing of the baton from one generation of architects to another.  That assumes that the mentor has all of the knowledge and power and that their career path is the “right” one.  It also assumes that our profession is static and that knowledge handed down will always have value. Especially in today’s culture, career paths are highly individual.  Mentors should be guides, asking questions not imposing rules. 

Mentoring is multi-directional
There is a common myth that mentoring requires a level of experience or specialized knowledge.  At some fuzzily defined point, we “cross over” from being mentored to mentoring.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Why do you think there are so many executive career coaches?  We all need an outside party to help us view ourselves from 35,000 feet and take stock.  Someone to challenge us and help us set new goals.  We grow by teaching others, learning from them and seeking out new knowledge and paths for ourselves.  No matter where you are in your career path, you should seek out mentorship.  The AIA has some valuable resources on its website http://www.aia.org/professionals/mentors/index.htm for helping you make professional development and learning a key part of your firm’s culture.

In your career path, who has inspired you?  Who can you work with today to get that kick in the pants to keep on growing?  Who can you reach out to, drawing out both their passion and purpose and your own?  Please share your experiences both as a mentor and being mentored.

Obstacle or Opportunity?

You did it!  This is week nine, the final installment in the Breaking Points and Turning Points Novena.  Thank you for taking this journey and exploring the issues that affect your very identity as an architect and creative person.  This week, we focus on recognizing what are often considered necessary evils as the true roadblocks they are and eliminating them from our path.

Way up there on my list of thoroughly annoying turns of phrase is the application of the word “challenging” as a euphemism for everything from the truly problematic to the downright irritating.  It is my belief that people who use this term are tying to force themselves to be relentlessly positive in the face of a negative situation.  In other words, they don’t know the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity. 

Yes, there are times (daily) when we have to suck it up and deal with life’s messy surprises, but we shouldn’t have to deal with permanent or recurring frustrations as any kind of rite of passage.  In your quest to find and enriching and fulfilling career as an architect, there are only a few true rites of passage.  I have separated them into three groups:
The Quantitative Rites - the attainments - are the prescriptive things you have to do to be considered an architect from a literal perspective. All architects complete these rites.
1.  Graduate from an architecture program with a professional degree
2.  Qualify, through proper work experience, to take your licensing exams
3.  Successfully complete exams
4.  Maintain license in good standing, including continuing education

The Qualitative Rites - the judgements- are the milestone achievements that gain you recognition in the eyes of your peers, clients and consultants.  Most successful architects complete these rites.
1.  Specialize in an area of design
2.  Publish or have articles published featuring you or your work
3.  Receive an award for design or professional merit
4.  Be sought out for your expertise and asked to participate on a board, committee or panel

The Influential Rites - the impacts -are the transformative moments you have where you bring your knowledge and experience to bear to positively influence the world around you.  Only truly great architects complete these rites-but all of us could-if we stopped viewing obstacles as challenges and wasting our creative energy.
1.  Inspire someone to see the world differently
2.  Contribute, through design, to the welfare of others
3.  Mentor others to help them achieve their fullest potential
4.  Be a voice, through supportive environments, to those who cannot or do not know how to request what they need
5.  Advocate, through the person that you are and the way you live your life, all the ways that design does matter

Notice how none of the rites of passage involve any of the following “challenges” I like to call the Seven Deadly Sins of Architecture:
1.  Endure abuse by clients, co-workers or superiors
2.  Manipulate clients, co-workers or superiors
3.  Overstrategize every action in an attempt to stay one step ahead
4.  Seek credit and recognition for accomplishments
5.  Blame others (even when deserved) for unfavorable situations or outcomes
6.  Overpromise or overcommit to projects, organizations or events
7.  Undercut perceived competition both in and out of the office

That’s because none of these things make us stronger or better in any way.  They frustrate and aggravate us and suck up all our creative energy. Far from being challenges, they are obstacles (many of them self-created) and the sooner you recognize them as such, the sooner you can overcome them and focus on your true architectural Rites of Passage.

I recently saw a photo of the destroyed Berlin Wall spray painted with the statement “We are the wall.”  Nothing could be more true.

Livin' Large

The topic of week six of our Turning Points and Breaking Points Novena is being open to opportunities that can lead us in unexpected and exhilarating new directions.

Life is what happens to you while you are busy making plans.  No matter how much you think you know, how hard you have worked towards a specific outcome, there is often a curveball.  That’s a bad thing only if you lock focus on how you didn’t get what you thought you wanted, aka the conventionally defined career.  Convention, being the gross generalization that it is, mostly proves inadequate to achieving fulfillment. I asked Raul Barreneche, a friend and fellow graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture, to share the story of his very unconventional journey as an architect to inspire all of you to see beyond your limits and start grabbing those brass rings. 

As a student, Raul’s writing talent led him to be an editor of the architecture journal at CMU. Professors encouraged him to pursue writing as well as traditional practice but, like most of us, he had every intention of working at an architecture firm. Raul didn’t go through college thinking, hey, maybe I’ll be an editor for a major architecture publication, and travel the world writing about culture and design.  He didn’t plan to freelance to major magazines published on architecture and design (Architecture, Architectural Record, Metropolitan Home, Dwell, just to name a few), or to publish seven books and have his own interior architecture practice.  But he also didn’t let the plans he did have at any given time get in the way of being open to these opportunities as they presented themselves along the way. The funny thing about taking risks, though, is that you stop being willing to settle.  That’s when you realize that your next great opportunity is probably right in front of you, but you have been too afraid to see it, much less make it happen. 

If you are comfortable, you are probably complacent
Architecture magazine needed an assistant editor and Raul decided to take the amazing opportunity in front of him right out of college.  Some might fret that they were taking too much of a departure from actually working as a practicing architect.  Raul just took the leap. “What excited me about the opportunity to write instead of go right into architecture practice was that I could see that architecture could be limited as a profession by so many things. My first job writing for Architecture offered so many amazing opportunities at that point in my life- my assignments allowed me to travel all over the world, interviewing some of the most famous architects about their work, ones I’d idolized in school,” says Raul.  Although he progressed from Assistant Editor to Associate Editor; then Senior Editor; eventually Executive Editor, “I decided it was time for a change after working there for almost seven years. It’s important to see the glass ceilings and the limitations of where you are.  Don’t stay so long that you go stale.”  Raul took another huge leap eleven years ago when he left his position at Architecture and became a freelance writer.  “Going freelance allowed me to be a Contributing Editor (for Travel + Leisure and Interior Design) as well as write for may other design publications, doing twice as much work and making more money than I had in my old job.” Then he was given the opportunity to co-author a book for Rizzoli.  The editor liked his writing so much, they optioned him to write a book on his own.  That first book, Tropical Modern was inspired by a trip to Brazil.  Raul just published his fourth book with Rizzoli, the Tropical Modern House in early 2011.  Additionally, he authored a series of three books, New Retail,  New Museums, and Modern House Three, for Phaidon as part of their idea series.  But there’s more.  Raul was approached by a friend a few years ago about designing interiors.  While initially inclined to turn the offer down because he hadn’t practiced up to this point in his career, he decided yet again to take the risk.  That job led to others and to the establishment of r. Ltd. Design, his New York City interior architecture practice.

Cast a wide net to catch a broader range of opportunities
Another secret to Raul’s success has been his network of people and depth of life experiences.  “I am always conscious of other things happening around me in order to avoid getting stuck in too narrow of a position.  If you collect experiences and are open to the opportunities all around you, it will serve you at some point later,” he observes.  “At this point, I’m spending about 50% of my time doing interior architecture and 50% freelance writing. If I’d been in any one camp, I would have dealt with more hardship as markets and economies fluctuate.  For example, striking out as a freelance writer as I did eleven years ago would be a much tougher proposition today.”  Raul is enjoying the dual aspect of his career on both the critical and producing side of the architecture fence.  While he didn’t take the obvious path, he is now practicing architecture as he imagined he would all those years ago, but he is also doing so much more.  His office contains both a drafting table and a desk, so he can move easily between both worlds. He also never stops consuming design and architecture, often leveraging information gained on a personal trip to later propose as an article or idea for a book.  “My work is very fluid, encompassing art, design, architecture and sometimes even travel and leisure.” 

Having a great creative career isn’t about pursuing money or fame.  It’s about enriching yourself by being immersed in the people and places around you and saying yes to the things that interest you even if they don’t seem directly connected to your career goals.  Once you stop worrying about what you are supposed to be doing, it’s amazing how life manages to bring you to exactly the right place.

Be Your Own Stage Mom

We further explore how to stop holding ourselves back in week five of our Turning Points and Breaking Points Novena, by focusing on cultivating a personal mission and learning how to market it.

Ah, the stage mom, militantly advocating for her child’s success. While we might feel the poor kid being pushed into the spotlight is a bit of a train wreck, admit it, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone that enthusiastically putting you on center stage and showcasing your talents, fighting tooth and nail to get you noticed? Well, go look in the mirror.  You are your very own self-promotion machine.

Believe in yourself.  A good stage mamma never doubts her baby’s abilities.  You have to know your strengths and be willing to show them off.  Make a list of the ten things you do best as an architect. Choose specific actions, things you feel you are really, really good at doing like programming, research, charrettes with clients, collaborating with your team, sketching or rendering.  Rank them from what you love to do most to least.  For each item, list your single greatest accomplishment.  List three ways you will improve on this skill in the next year. You can say things like publish an article showcasing this issue and my expertise with it, entering a competition, getting a certification, hosting a lunch and learn, speaking to my AIA chapter, anything, anything that allows you to claim a greater level of knowledge and share that knowledge with others.  I don’t care whether you are an intern or own your own firm- figure out at least three ways you are going to show yourself off in the next twelve months.  Give yourself depth of experience outside of work on projects and you will be surprised how quickly projects that match the activities you truly love and have a talent for find their way to you.

Never stop smiling. How can your top five best and most loved skills make a difference to your community, company or your clients?  What do these skills say about your architectural personality?  Write your own personal mission statement.  Keep it to a single sentence that captures the essence of who you uniquely are as an architect.  Make sure it is a life-affirming positive statement. Communicate it to clients and co-workers through everything you say and do in the design and construction process as well as in your extracurricular activities. Let it be what helps guide you to the volunteer/community/professional activities that most reflect your values as a person and as an architect.  As you toil away on a big deadline, deal with a difficult client or experience a setback, remind yourself of your mission statement and let it keep you on track.

Talent is only part of your score.  Charm, style and grace factor heavily into the judges score as well.  As a former boss once wisely remarked on the subject of getting work, “first, they have to like you.” So while you might really want to focus on twirling those flaming batons, that kind of intensity might just lose you points with a client, colleague, boss or co-worker if you fail to connect. The best performers know how to connect with their audience, their focus is outward not inward.  To successfully connect, you need to know yourself and your abilities, your mission as an architect so well that you don’t need to worry about your performance.  You need to live your best talents in everything you do, including volunteer work and personal projects (like writing a blog).  If you walk the talk in this way, there is an honesty and an integrity in what you bring to your work that is beyond reproach and it will resonate with everyone around you.

For God’s sake, get a mentor.  Every stage mom’s goal is to get her kid a good agent.  While she never stops riding herd on the process, she knows she doesn’t have access to all the networks, or knowledge of all of the opportunities.  Neither do you.  Mentors introduce you to more people, help you stay focussed, talk you up and maybe even nominate you for an award now and again.  The need for a mentor is ageless.  No matter where you are in the spectrum of your career, you can use a little coaching and encouragement, someone to encourage you to reach outside your comfort zone and take some risks to stay fresh and at the top of your game.

If you want your career to take off, don’t wait to be discovered.  Take a cue from stage moms everywhere and start promoting your talents.  Please feel free to contact me if you’d like some coaching to help you hone those stage mom skills or a virtual mentor.  I invite everyone to also share their best self-promotion story- your success can become someone else’s inspiration.

Green Fades to Blue: Would you rather sustain or be restored?

Mention restoration and most minds go to some historical building project. I subscribe to a much broader definition that encompasses the ability of a building to generate a positive effect. Beyond green design, which at best seeks neutrality, and at worst comes with practically a whole religion’s worth of moral baggage, restorative design, including “blue” principles, seeks to replenish us in body, mind and spirit. William McDonough has written about the power of architecture to be restorative and at the 2008 Sustainable Brands International Conference, Bob Isherwood introduced the term Blue design, to reflect the need for strategic and innovative solutions that give something back. In other words, it’s not enough to have the cache of being sustainable. To really impact people’s lives, we have to show them what’s in it for them- we need to provide restoration.

Think about the buildings in which we live, work and play: How do these environments contribute to the stress in our lives? How do they cost us too much money to maintain while giving us largely inadequate shelter and support to live our lives? How often might they actually be harmful to our well being through contaminants in the air or water, noise or light pollution? 



Blue as an expansive approach
Many early adopters of the term Blue Design or the phrase “green to blue” focus on the power of design to give something back to the community by having a net positive effect on air quality and energy (in the meantime, we have been hard pressed to even design net-zero, or energy neutral buildings). This narrow definition of blue loses sight of a much larger goal that we should be striving for in our built environment, the ability to be restorative, even therapeutic. While contaminants in that environment can contribute to a lack of focus and well being, cultural impacts are far greater. We inhabit a world of sensory overload. We lead isolated and independent lives in the processed, overproduced stage set of life. Depleting days feature streaming information in the form of constant interruptions and demands on our attention. The resulting level of stress that we experience impacts our ability to focus our attention, creating a state of persistent mental fatigue that impairs our quality of life. The antidote: a restorative environment.

Building for the senses

It’s unlikely that life in the information age is going to change anytime soon, or that its cultural impacts are necessarily negative. They just feel that way because there is such disconnect between our lifestyles and the spaces in which we live. The industrial age city and post-industrial sprawl has created both interior and exterior spaces that exacerbate our state of depletion. Our built world needs an overhaul.

Architecture, landscape and urban design elements can recharge our direct attention capabilities and restore balance and wellness in our lives if our designs reconnect users with nature and other living things through biophilic design strategies. Work towards solutions that encourage interaction and that provide relief from unwanted or irrelevant stimuli. While specific design strategies will arise from specific design problems, you should approach every project with the goal of restoration in mind. Some characteristics of restorative environmental design as defined by Stephen Kellert in his book Linkages: Understanding and Designing Connections between the Natural and Human Built Environments include:

1. Prospect- the vista
2. Refuge- the safe place
3. Water-actual water or design elements that provide glimmer, movement or symbolic images representing water
4. Biodiversity- a rich palette of natural materials supplied through both interactive spaces (gardens, planters) and views.
5. Sensory Variability- response to the changing times of day and seasons
6. Biomimicry-natural materials, natural forms and structures
7. Sense of playfulness-things that delight, surprise and amuse
8. Enticement-complexity that encourages exploration

When was the last time a building brought you joy? What if every building could?

Measuring Distance with Time

Metrics are a funny thing.  There are all kinds of units out there to measure mass, volume, length, duration, ratios, rates.  And there are all kinds of ways of processing these numbers to make judgments about things like returns on investment, energy efficiency, job performance, throughputs; and determine things like status and rank.  Healthcare institutions live and die by numbers every day.

But what kind of metrics do we have for emotion?  For perception and understanding? As architects, we bridge the world of what is measurable and what is felt.  The spaces we create have to facilitate performance, and also provide the kind of intangible benefits that are linked to people feeling better about their surroundings, and therefore functioning better within them. We obsess about the design of space in three dimensions, but often forget there are other dimensions like time, light, sound and smell.  People move through space and experience it in the context of the time of day and seasons. They also experience space within the context of their own lives.  Someone who is mentally debilitated by disease may view a sound, odor or pattern as disturbing.  Someone who is harried and stressed out may become frustrated in an environment where they cannot immediately find their way to critical destinations.  Someone who is afraid can easily become overwhelmed by the scale of a building.  Someone who is physically compromised can be agitated by loud noises and glaring lights.

We navigate this world with our senses.  Our environments influence how we feel, then think and act.   As a first step, think about just one of these dimensional variables, that of time.  Use it to generate a whole different kind of metric- a metric of experience.  Is a corridor 10 minutes long?  What does it feel like to move through a space for that length of time?  What if you have a sore hip or are in a wheelchair or have a young child with you?  I hope that you will encounter many revelations as you move down that path.