Editing out the opportunity

It’s week four of the Shattering the Meme Novena.  Especially in a recession economy, which focusses on lack and limits, our focus must shift to releasing judgement of ourselves and others in order to be more open to the possibilities that come from less rigid thinking.

How well do you know yourself?  Your real interests and capabilities?  I bet they are in there buried down deep, disconnected from what you actually do for a living, expressed maybe as a hobby, or maybe not at all.  Today, I would like you to ask yourself why.  Why are you so disconnected from what you really love to do?  Go, on, give all your reasons.  I’ll bet you have some really good ones.  Masterful rationalizations, all.  So good in fact, that I bet you have never even attempted to set any of the things that would help you realize your dream life in motion.  Or maybe you did in a halfhearted way, since you didn’t want to take that much risk or invest that strongly in something that wasn’t going to work out anyway.  Yeah.

What you have actually done without even realizing it was to edit opportunity right out of your life, just as a surgeon would excise a tumor.  You never truly explored the possibilities or made many plans.  You just knew you couldn’t or shouldn’t go in that direction.  What an insidious meme, the one that leaves us subconsciously longing and always suppressed, all the while believing that we are better off just doing what life expects of us.

Judge and Jury
When I work with coaching clients, this is often the biggest hurdle I find.  As a first step, I encourage them to do some very introspective work to get clarity about what they love to do and attach that to the reason they want to do it.  Then I ask them why they are not doing it already.  That is a profound question.  The answer, when you stop to think about, it is that you are not allowing yourself.  This lack of permission comes wrapped in all kinds of reasons that seem valid until you dig a little deeper.  Things like, “I have too many responsibilities right now to spend the money it would take to get set up,” or “The market for that is too small to really allow me to earn a living.” When I ask my clients how they know that those outcomes will occur if they allow themselves to explore a particular passion, they often have no answer.  They just know.  Because their conditioning (education, early childhood, work experience) told them so.  Before they even allowed the idea to be fully formed and vetted, all on their own, they shut it down.  Deemed it unworthy of seeing the light of day. 

Make the investment
It can be scary to follow your heart.  But you need to think about all the things you are losing by not doing so.  What is your happiness worth?  What does the stress you are experiencing right now doing work that doesn’t serve you cost in terms of your health and well-being?  What does the rat race do to your quality of life, or that of your family?  In economic terms, this is called the opportunity cost.  What you choose to forgo by playing it safe.  Playing is safe also prevents you from receiving the big payoff in every dimension of your life that comes from living with passion and purpose.  Clients, employers, members of your network, will all notice you in a much more positive way once you choose to invest in acquiring the skill and experience you need to do the work that you really love instead of the work that gets fed to you by default.  When you look at all of the costs of playing it safe (physical, mental and spiritual), it becomes obvious just how precarious of a position you put yourself in by staying stuck instead of making the bold moves towards living your true life’s purpose. Playing it safe isn’t so safe after all.

Beat back the lack
We can all fall prey to focusing on what we don’t have.  Especially in this economy, where we are faced with constant bad news, it’s easy to believe that we need to hold back instead of charging forward.  We want to conserve instead of expand.  To carefully guard our reserves, whether time, money or networking capital “just in case.”  Well, the rainy day is happening right now if you are anything but fulfilled and purpose-driven in your life and career.  The stress of trying to maintain the status quo is what makes you feel like you and what you have to offer will never be enough. Believing that there just isn’t opportunity to be had becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  What’s needed instead is to look at what you have to offer and to whom it will make a difference.  Sharing what you have to offer starting right now and making a difference in the world is far more important than holding back.  I liken this thinking to refusing to make a $20.00 donation to your favorite charity because you want to wait until you get rich and can give them an endowment.  It’s kind of ridiculous when you look at it in those terms, isn’t it?  Every little contribution you make does make a difference.  What’s more, is that they add up and propel you forward.

Shatter the meme:
The number one regret of the dying as reported by nurses who cared for hospice patients was that they had not lived a life true to themselves, but instead tried to meet everyone else’s expectations.  Allow yourself to think about who you really are and what you really want, even if it seems ridiculous or frivolous.  Play with the thought, get comfortable with it instead of immediately filing it away because you can’t see the path to achieve it.  In fact, banish all thoughts of “how” and just focus on why you have this dream.  The more you can get in touch with what motivates you, the easier it will become to not only see opportunities, but to fearlessly pursue them.  Then, choose to take action.  Once you do, you will be surprised at all of the opportunities that start to come your way related to your true life’s purpose.  It’s not a miracle, they were always available to you, but now you no longer have them painted over with wite out.

Avoiding the Architecture of Fear

Wow.  My post on the limiting beliefs of architects grew legs, stood, up and ran out the door. It was being chased.  While I never expect that readers of my blog will agree with me wholesale, reactions to this post fell very strongly into two camps.  The camp that agreed with me and said "Right on,  we need to overcome these limiting beliefs," made me feel that I had written about a meaningful and timely topic.  The camp that threw cold water on the very premise of the post confirmed it.  I noticed a very specific pattern that emerged among the naysayers.  It was fear.  Fear of being irrelevant,  seen as extravagant or uncooperative by clients.  It is this very fear that is being manifested as a reality in our profession.  Therefore, I have taken these comments, condensed them into some major themes around fear and share them with you today.  Since most of the discussion was generated on the American Institute of Architects Linked In Group, you can visit this page if you want to see the comments and discussion chain firsthand.

Fear: I will play into their worst stereotype
This one is tricky because no one wants to be typecast as the black clad ideologue with funky glasses who is using their client as a vehicle for their own artistic license.  Many comments I received were concerned that architects are our own worst enemy and that by pursuing a higher level of design, we were alienating our clients, showing them that we weren't listening to them and running up the costs.  It wouldn't be a stereotype if there were not some grains of truth here, mostly born out by Starchitects and their wannabes.  However,  being an advocate for solving the right problem and innovative solutions instead of being a waitress is not the same as being out of touch.  If anything, it shows you are more in touch and are providing the service they hired you to perform, instead of being a rubber  stamp.

Good design is too expensive, or too risky
Maybe it's because the design magazines are filled with examples of exotic materials and systems.  Maybe it's  because we don't really believe that you can be creative on a budget.  I was astounded at the number of people who lashed out at the very idea of bringing a higher level of design to their projects.  It truly saddened me to see architects with the mindset of a low level developer, believing that they were  providing value to their clients by delivering the staus quo.  Rather than meeting client expectations for adequacy, meet their expectations for a truly amazing space that meets needs they were heretofore afraid to state. Good design is carefully considered and responsive, and can absolutely be done with basic materials and on a budget with only the premium of creativity on your part.  A better thing to consider is how much you are paying to play it safe and add to the already bulging inventory of unremarkable buildings.

The profession can't afford this
Talk about fear-based thinking.  These commenters thought they were taking the high road by adopting a lofty, philosophical position about risk management and responsible architecture.  No wonder our profession is struggling.  What a limiting mindset to meekly take a backseat,  hoping to just be of some usefulness.  This only buys into a developer driven mentality and frankly, shows you already believe that architects are obsolete.  What the profession cannot afford is a bunch of synchophants who are afraid to be creative.  I had to chuckle that the most controversial comment in my post was a quote, "If you know it will work, it isn't creative,"from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.  This quote to me captures the very essence of creativity: being unafraid to take on a new challenge, to think outside of the box, to stop recycling ideas from past projects.  Isn't this what our profession needs most?  Yet, many took that comment to mean that taking a risk meant abandoning functionality.  True, form should follow function, but how to best house that function is what the act of creating architecture is all about.  It's called a practice because it is an experiment.  Otherwise, we are just drafters.

To me, these fears underline the reason so many of us feel we are in a career crisis.  We have accepted the premise that we are lucky to have work and therefore we had better not rock the boat.  We are playing it so safe that it becomes doubtful that we are actually producing architecture at all.  I can empathize with my post-dissenters because I have worked for firms that propagated these fears and the limiting beliefs that spawn them.  I felt completely demoralized in my work during those years because I felt like I was not making anybody better as a result of the projects being produced in these conditions.

There is a better way and I have made it my mission to help other architects find it.  You can choose to follow along with my blog posts and facebook community, but if you are looking to get on the path to career transformation, you need to look at a more immersive experience.  I invite you to consider one on one career coaching, or to take part in my new telesminar series.  Based on my book, Career Crisis, the teleseminars will explore themes of finding your passion, understanding where you are in the creative cycles of your life,  and how to best position yourself to work in the way that is most fulfilling to you.  It is time to stop practicing an architecture of fear and move forward into producing meaningful, enriching spaces that allow us to work at our highest creative potential.

What my house taught me

As an architect, it’s kind of interesting to me that I have learned several major life lessons from a

house. This structure was our family home for eight years. We bought it less than a year after relocating to Cleveland, OH from Phoenix, AZ in order to be closer to my ailing parents. Just the fact that we had relocated at all meant staring down some of my biggest fears, saying goodbye to a city we loved, good friends and professional opportunities, resigning from boards and commissions. So, I thought I’d done it. Made my big leap. But the house had more lessons in store for us. It seemed a pleasant enough house, cheerful and light-filled, with a big backyard and an attached garage. Built in 1942, it was a “newer” home for the community. But we passed it up, citing the too small kitchen and dining room. Only after looking for several more weeks and finding nothing did we come back to it after we noticed that its owners, long moved away, had decided to cut the asking price for their vacant house significantly. We bought it conditionally, with every intention of putting on an addition, adding central air, and on. Fast forward eight years, no addition or central air and we were faced with the need to relocate for work after spending several months unemployed. We put the house for sale in the worst possible market, it sat empty for a year, was broken into by a copper pipe scavenger, and finally became a rental. Two years after moving away, I think I have finally learned the final lesson I needed and am willing to let it go. This is a huge step for me because I want to at least break even, but know that whatever it costs me to be free of this house, it will be nothing compared to the cost of continuing to own it. What a great metaphor for all the things we hold on to in our lives. We are afraid of losing things we think we should want, but in truth offer us very little value.

Lesson one: Never, ever settle
We had become weary of looking. I let the fact that the house was “OK” and cheap due to the price cut lure me into saying yes to something when my gut had originally said no. I passed up the house the first time because it really wasn’t what we were looking for. Instead of having faith that we would find a great house, I almost felt obligated as an architect to transform this one. We had completely remodeled our home in Phoenix, I reasoned, so why not this one? Well, for starters, the level of addition we would have needed to undertake was not financially worth it, and even if we could have done it, we would still not have had the home we really wanted. While there are many life situations that require a little extra effort on our part, there is a difference between the effort to make a good thing great and the effort to improve something that even after being improved will never be what you want. We do this not just with homes, but with our jobs, even relationships. When you invest your energy in the “good enough” opportunity, you stop being open to receive the amazing one.

Lesson two: Place yourself in situations that bring you joy
Parts of this house just downright irritated me. I shudder to think about how much negativity I carried around. Every time I had to carefully open the dining room door to avoid hitting a chair or maneuver around the too small kitchen or deal with the lack of counter space in the bathroom, it annoyed me, if even on a subconscious level. Even though we bought new high end appliances and decorated and painted, everything about the home’s limitations subliminally said to me that my life had limits, had lack, had need. I might have realized it sooner if the situation with my ailing parents, raising two small children and having a stressful and demanding job had not been looming so large in my life. Given all those things, my home needed to be a positive affirmation and regenerative environment, and yet it was only reinforcing all of the other stress. What things in your life are you “putting up” with that are actually draining you? The things in your life should feed you and affirm not only the person you are, but the one you wish to become. Choose wisely.

Lesson three: Know when to walk away
When the time came to put the house up for sale, I knew the market was bad. While I was willing to price the house aggressively, it was important for me to be able to at least break even from the sale. Although it would have been well below comps, one realtor I talked to suggested pricing the house at about $2000 higher than we owed on it to really make it move. I chose the realtor who suggested that we list at only $15,000 below our original purchase price instead (that the house had lost that much of its original value considering all of the improvements we made was shocking enough). I had tapped out all of my savings and was fearful of getting into debt. Two months in, we dropped the price another $10,000 and still nothing. I was hemorrhaging money. Debt, the thing I had been so afraid of, began to pile up. It was not sustainable to have two households, especially when one of them was vacant. Finally, a year into this ordeal, we were able to get renters, which covered the cost of our mortgage. However, it’s hard to manage a property in a city far from where you live and our maintenance costs for their months in the house have exceeded that of the entire eight years we lived there. Operating from that place of fear, I considered my self lucky we at least had the mortgage covered. What I now realize is that even if we had sold the house at a $10,000 loss and had to be in debt in order to pay off the outstanding portion of our loan, we would have been so much further ahead financially. What seemed like practical and sensible thinking was really fear in disguise. Fear costs you so much more than the risk of losing. It traps you in a situations where you can never win.

Lesson four: Question your assumptions
I had an epiphany the other day. I don’t want to own this house any more. It’s that simple. There is no value to me in being a landlord. I need to let go. I started talking to realtors and learned that the Cleveland market is starting to turn around and that people are actively home shopping again. My fears had caused me to make assumptions about the market, based on the past. Making a fresh inquiry brought me facts. While property values are still abysmal, the market is moving along briskly. I can list this house and I might actually break even or come out just a few thousand dollars ahead on the sale.

I’ve moved on in my life to a great new career in a city I love. No need to be tethered to anything that might limit me. The sales agreement will be my diploma. It’s time for my house to teach a different pupil. Lessons learned!
You don't always have to learn the hard way.  My new book Career Crisis helps you to uncover the fears and assumptions you may be making in your own life so you can unblock them and move forward to what you really want.

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.

What’s your Mountain?

How is being an architect like scaling Mount Everest?  I always read accounts of climbers with a sort of sick fascination, part of me wondering what would ever possess anyone to take on this task.  You can’t even see very far from that high up, and your body is so ravaged by the lack of oxygen and extreme cold that you can’t hang out up there and enjoy it.  As someone who is not athletic and is proud of myself that I attend yoga class three times a week, I don’t have a refined appreciation for the physical.  Especially an extreme sport like mountain climbing. I didn’t see the appeal of putting your life on hold for nearly a year to train, then scale this mountain.  Why, why, I thought would anyone risk their life like this?  Why would they make themselves so uncomfortable, put their bodies through such a grueling experience?  I recently read Mark Inglis’s story of how he scaled Mt. Everest as a double amputee. Mark’s account helped me to see that it was about more than just the ego. 

It’s easy to take the concept of scaling Everest as a totally literal pursuit.  The man vs. nature plot at its finest.  But that would be getting it wrong.  You don’t climb the mountain to conquer the mountain.  You climb to conquer yourself. It’s about setting a challenge and devoting yourself single-mindedly to meeting that challenge with every resource of your physical, mental and spiritual being.  If you are going to climb Everest, you cannot let anything stand in your way, especially not yourself.  You clear out your life to train and then make the climb.  And then you let go, you work with, not against the mountain.  You respect its seasons, weather patterns and above all the advice of your guides.  Depending on the year, you may not make it up and the fact that by waiting, you live to make the attempt another time has to be enough.

So back to life as an architect.  What’s your Everest?  What big goal do you have that you would devote yourself to achieve?  What matters so much to who you are that you will make the time and the space to realize it?  If you don’t know, or came up with some wimpy goal like “get a promotion,” you are not alone.  Maybe just thinking along these lines made you feel slightly depressed because your career is so NOT going the way you hoped it would.  You may even be rolling your eyes right now and thinking that having a goal as big as yourself is as ridiculous as it is unattainable.

I’m here to tell you that it’s not.  You can have a career that is life-affirming because it reinforces your sense of purpose in this world.  But first, you have to be deeply in touch with what that purpose is.  You have to have a personal mission statement and a plan that includes steps you can do today that align you with that purpose.  You have to clear away all the fears and all of the rationalizations that are holding you back.  Like the mountain climber, you have to eliminate all the waster activities in your professional life that are not directly moving you towards your goals. 
As a reader of this blog, you aren’t content to have just an average career.  You want to make a difference.  You want to operate as an inspiration to the world.  And I want to help you get there.  In addition to my blog posts, I offer career coaching services that allow you to work with me one on one on your individual career quest.  I’m also so excited to announce that I will very shortly be publishing my first book, Career Crisis.  This book contains many of the strategies I use with my coaching clients, but it let’s you use my techniques and act as your own coach.  It’s not very long on purpose because it’s not meant to dictate, but to guide you.  You have to do the work, but if you do, I promise you’ll be amazed at the transformation you see in your career and in your life.

Find your career mountain and know that you can get to the top.  Get ready to challenge yourself to your greatest potential, to concentrate your efforts to a single purpose, to push through hardships, and finally, to stand up on that summit and say, “Yes, yes, I did it!”

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.

Wellness the Series: Urban Rx: Cures for Sick Places

My most recent article for Urban Times discusses ways neighborhoods can develop strategies to challenge blight.

Every city has at least one: the neighborhood with rampant crime, boarded up buildings, empty lots. Few stroll its streets and the businesses that remain have bars on the windows. This kind of place had a heyday once, but is now in a tragic state of demise. Often, such places are in strategic urban locations and ripe for revitalization. But, short of calling in the bulldozers, how does a neighborhood go about fomenting its renaissance? It starts with properly diagnosing the reasons for decline (every story is not the same) and working closely with neighborhood residents and businesses to develop the prescription to turn things around.

Read the Symptoms, Treat the Problem

A sketch I did showing the importance of mixed use and a variety of building textures, styles and colors as part of a charrette for the revitalization of Phoenix's Wilson neighborhood.

So often, response to urban decline is reactionary: high crime translates to constructing fences and more security, for example. However, responding defensively to a series of symptoms has the unintended consequences of creating an even more hostile environment, sending not the message of toughness, but a message that no one, not even the neighborhood residents, are very welcome in the neighborhood. Most people don’t understand this, neither do most planning and zoning commissions. Hence, we end up with everyone’s fears written into the codes, instead of everyone’s hopes.  Something like higher crime is usually a symptom of a greater urban disease, which is why applying the aspirin of “lockdown” to the cancer of urban decay seldom works.  What a community really needs to do is take a long hard look at itself and begin to look at social and economic factors that have changed for the worse, then look at strategies for making a change:

Urban decay Vandalism at the Broadford Works on Ann Street. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Character is Brand – Most struggling neighborhoods are suffering from an identity crisis, while they know they need to have a more walkable community that feels safe and is clean, they need help figuring out their unique path to revitalization.  No two neighborhoods are exactly alike.  If you take the time to talk to the people who live there you’ll find out why they stay, and even more, why they’re willing to fight so hard for revitalization. That character, which is an experience not available elsewhere in the city, is what needs to be celebrated and cultivated in everything from the streetscape and plantings, to the type of businesses that are courted, to the density and style of the buildings. Think about traffic patterns and flows, the accessibility of parking and how parking impacts the feel of the space. The brand that develops is what can be used to court new businesses. Brand builds the expectation of the customer/user.  It needs to be based on a solid and clear vision, integrated as an experience, and it has to deliver on its promise.

• Leverage Assets – For any community, being able to achieve what it wants (its vision for a future), from what it has (its character and history) involves knowing what it needs. Copying what worked for another neighborhood is no guarantee of success. People are not attracted to generic, soulless communities to live, work and play. They are attracted to the quirky, wonderful little neighborhood with the interesting mix of shops and restaurants that is worth the trip. Once they spend enough time there, they may even become interested in living nearby. Communities must be being willing to start small – maybe just a few blocks on a main road to develop a critical mass. Look at the merchant mix and think about the message that it sends, then work with the owners of the businesses you want to keep to help them find locations where they can be grouped in a way that they help one another succeed (i.e. a series of restaurants and shops in a row).

• Get Momentum – Even the most thorough and realistic of plans won’t lead to revitalization if the community itself isn’t engaged. While it may be impossible to have complete agreement, it is not impossible to reach out to local businesses and law enforcement as well as grant programs and other opportunities available at a municipal level. Seeing these first steps of positive change allays fears and suspicion and encourages residents to be more involved as well because they can see the effect of their actions. Most struggling neighborhoods have plenty of missing teeth in the form of abandoned or under-occupied buildings and vacant lots.  However, in order to convince new businesses to locate there, a neighborhood must have some momentum going. Even something as simple as a streetscape improvement project shows a commitment to change and reinforces that all-important brand.  Don’t forget to grow entrepreneurs from local residents and always aim for authenticity.

Seek Alternative Therapies

Photo c/o dennoir (flickr)

While they may have had their place, traditional zoning codes with their restrictive description of uses have little relevance for the modern city.  Zoning codes are about achieving uniformity and compliance, not about cultivating character – kind of like Mom saying “no.”  What if, instead, we thought about codes as a list of everything you can do, should do, might do?  Form-based codes  are a great alternative for urban areas because they are not about segregating uses, but about encouraging density, walkability and character.  Many cities have implemented them and many more like my home city of Cincinnati, Ohio are in the process of doing so because they allow redevelopment to be shepherded in a way that reinforces identity of place over simply following rules.  Form-based codes focus on the fine grain aspect of experience, looking at things like human scale and pedestrian friendliness.  True to their name, this code system is less about land use than urban form, with an emphasis on creating public space shaped by private buildings.
Communities that take the time to really know their needs, and are willing to fight for them, do get better.  What’s critical is to stay true to a vision, pull the community into the effort, support local businesses and never stop improving.  Think of redevelopment as a bird flapping its wings – it can soar as long as it continues the effort, but can glide only so long before it will plummet.  It takes time, patience and tireless commitment for an ailing neighborhood to recover, but blight is curable.

Superheroes of the Built World

Last week, I took trapeze lessons.  A group of co-workers have taken on a challenge to do extreme sports activities over the course of the year and sent an email inviting others to join.  I could not hit reply fast enough- what an adventure!  When I got up on that platform, my inner daredevil took over and it was beyond thrilling.  I only regret that I do not have the body of an acrobat, and thus could not do things like a catch and release (but I tried, I tried).  After I develop more core strength, I will go back again in the hopes of successfully completing this stunt.  My four year old self is begging for the opportunity. You see, this was a childhood fantasy come true; I loved going to the circus and, next to the clowns, the acrobats were my favorite. I wanted to be one when I grew up, causing my mother some bit of consternation. While I did pursue gymnastics lessons though high school, I never competed and by the time I was eight or so, I had abandoned my dream career in the circus for being an astrophysicist, then a teacher, then an artist, only finding my way to architecture late in high school. My time on the trapeze got me thinking about what our childhood fantasy careers are really trying to tell us about who we are.

One thing they don’t tell us is to play it safe

Children crave the action oriented, things that serve an obvious purpose with a touch of adventure thrown in. They don’t dream of hours spent in mind-numbing meetings, being heckled by a bullying boss or playing office politics.  They don’t fantasize about the drudgery of overtime because of over-promised deadlines.  They most certainly do not aspire to being awarded some silly title that will pigeon-hole them into a constrained set of roles.  In fact, if you were to present any of these dismal (but all too real) scenarios to a child, they would respond by proposing some bold brash action to put the perpetrator of such misery in his or her place.

This visceral response, commonly echoed in comics, and even some movies, allows the hero to stand up for him or herself, indulging in the supreme satisfaction of defeating evil, telling off an annoying person, double crossing a backstabber  or ceremoniously walking away from oppressive expectations like a toxic job or relationship.  Many times this is coupled with  a physical act- literally vanquishing life’s villain.  We can’t legally do many of these things in real life, so we bury our frustrations and resign ourselves to our fate.  Kapow!  That’s the sound of me smacking you upside the head (virtually of course).  When you feel the urge to be resigned is when you should resign - literally - from whatever is oppressing your ability to be great.  Reconnect with your childhood self and your innermost passions- in other words, look beyond the ordinary career path.

What would Wonder Woman do?
As a child, you truly believed you could change the world.  What you may not realize is that you still can.  You don’t have to accept less than your expectations.  In career paths laden with compromise and nuance, our purpose gets lost.  This is a creativity buzzkill to say the least.  Choose to embark on a more adventurous route:

Lead a double life
No, you don’t need to have a secret identity (unless you want to), but you do need to have more than one dimension.  You can deal with the sometimes mundane aspects involved in being Diana Prince when you know that as Wonder Woman, you are saving the world.  Many times when I talk to someone who is frustrated in their career, they usually work at their job and that’s about it.  They have become flattened, so the consequences of the day to day effort involved in a project or interpersonal business relationships become all consuming.  If you have lost perspective in this way, you need to look for opportunities to live your passion outside of your job.  Volunteer in the community, apply to be a member of a board or commission- do something else that matters to you to expand your network.  It might seem counter-intuitive, but when you expose yourself to fun and inspiring activities (like trapezing), you actually become better at solving workplace problems and making career choices.

Be a hero
You are an architect, so why isn’t your city better?  People on the street may not cry out for help like they do in comic books, but it’s not very heroic of you to keep ignoring obvious need.  Heroes don’t let a purse snatcher get away because they’d rather wait for their archenemy to launch some diabolical plot.  They help wherever they are needed.  So should you. Take initiative and work to make a change. 

Confront your nemesis
What’s holding you back?  What are you too afraid to even attempt?  If you take the time to really think about it, these root fears of inadequacy or failure are the excuse you use not to pursue things that really matter  to you.  They make you risk adverse and keep you stuck in that rut you always complain about being stuck in.  Challenge yourself and remember, those elaborate plots to eliminate the hero were always foiled in the end (mostly because they were way too elaborate).  Your nemesis is really just you over-thinking everything.

Over the next few weeks, I am launching my second Patron Saint of Architecture novena (click on the tab at the top of the page to read last year's Breaking Points and Turning Points novena).  Change the World (an experiment), will profile cities as seen through the lens of the real-life superheroes who weren’t afraid to step outside their comfort zone and champion a cause in the built environment.  What they did made a difference, and you will get to hear their stories so that you, too can be inspired to use your powers as an architect for the greater good.   Before you shut down this idea by automatically thinking that you can’t possibly pull off a stunt like this, I want to share the most profound thing I discovered at my trapeze lesson: falling is truly no big deal.  It’s how you get down when you are done with your act.

NIMBY and the Unintended Consequence

Is it fear of change, or actual aversion that causes us to rally against new ideas? Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) is the bane of most planners as well as anyone who’s had to go through a public hearing process.  Concerned neighbors worry about the impact that a proposed project, change of use or zoning might have on their property and they speak up loud and clear at public hearings, becoming influencers of opinion and striking fear into the hearts of approval boards.  Rightly or wrongly, they bully their concerns into prohibitive restrictions or even outright banishment of a proposed change.  It’s easy to be judgy as architects and planners who understand (or think we do) that the pros outweigh the cons and know (or think we do) that all those feared unintended consequences are no more likely than a child’s fear of monsters under the bed.  We become almost pedantic in the face of these obstacles to change.

However, NIMBY is a double-edged sword.  It’s not only the narrow-minded, bigoted, or greedy who take issue.  Sometimes, those people in the trenches can run through scenarios we never envisioned that could in fact lead to disaster.  The designers and social workers behind Pruitt-Igoe thought that they were counteracting blight and providing a better social alternative to housing for the poor.  Their revolutionary design concept didn’t take long to implode, figuratively and then literally, when the project was demolished just 17 years after construction was completed. 

What’s good for the goose...
At it’s heart, NIMBY-ism is rooted in support for a concept in general, but an aversion to taking the risk of having this experiment played out as a specific where it could affect us.  How many times have you designed a project from on high, imposing what you believe is best on its users? How many times have you been part of a panel or commission who tried to mold policy around practices you deemed to be the right answer? Good intentions aren’t good enough when we are talking about things that influence real lives. We can only do that by really understanding the needs of our users, by seeing though their eyes and being willing to experience what we are asking them to live with.  The best projects do that - they are not so focused on playing to the lowest common denominator or influencing behavior that they stop being spaces that people want to inhabit.

The grand utopian vision is wearing blinders
I think that it is critical that we not feel pressure to have all the answers.  We are taught to be utopians, the examples of masters LeCorbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Baron Haussmann held up for their bold, irreverent approaches that got people to live in a modern (read appropriate) way. An arrogance is cultivated within us that just because we do our research and have conviction, we can improve the life of the average slob.  No wonder that average slob is so damn suspicious of our ideas, hatched behind their backs and forced down their throats like a good dose of castor oil.  No wonder they say “NO WAY is that happening in my neighborhood!”

The New Urbanists are on to something, whether you like them or not.  They started asking, “how do people really want to live in their cities and neighborhoods, and how can we facilitate that?”  There’s a reason that high modernism never took off and most housing developments are based on traditional references.  Oh yes, there’s an unintended consequence for the lack of design and vision, defensive planning and zoning statutes, and pandering to nostalgia that plagues most cities.  But those consequences were born out of the design and planning world’s inability to listen, understand and give vision to lives that people really want to lead.

Are you an Architectural Luddite?

Do you cling to the comfort of the way things are “supposed to be” as you compulsively align the objects on your desk?  Are you made uncomfortable when new practice paradigms are introduced, choosing first to disregard, then criticize them, only grudgingly adopting them when your clients say you have to?  On the innovation curve spectrum  you would rank as a laggard.  But you probably don’t see yourself that way.  You think that you are being smart by not jumping ahead as an early adopter of the latest trends.  You grouse about how the market is changing and everything is so much more competitive.  You really have no clue how to survive in this changing market, so you double down on the old way of doing things, you stay in your comfort zone and maybe feel really clever that you are making the same old presentations and decisions, but using digital technology.  Like the Luddites  resisting mechanization during the Industrial Revolution, you are futilely fighting change.  Is the new the predator of the old, or simply its evolution?  

The emperor has no clothes

Skills are transferable, habits and routines are not.  A creative mind set free knows no limits.  So ask yourself, are new paradigms that challenge your comfort zone really bad, or are they threatening to expose your own fears that you aren’t creative enough to handle the change?

A small reward is better than none

Sure in a red-ocean, highly competitive environment, there are still winners and losers.  In fact that’s the point- to eliminate competition at all costs.  But that also diminishes you because it undercuts the overall value not just of an old paradigm, but of who you are and why a client should work with you at all.  The next time you feel the urge to smugly declare “winning,” just think of Charlie Sheen.

It’s the new normal

This mindset, now pervading our culture, is just pathetic.  To think that you have to settle for living up to less than your full potential (and by transference your work and the effect it has on others) shortchanges society as a whole.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of a future that doesn’t have to happen.  If you find yourself just settling, it’s time to start asking why you are holding on to processes and paradigms that are clearly not serving you.  No one can be innovative if they aren’t passionate and accepting a bleak fade into the abyss is hardly inspirational.

A great piece by Thomas Fridstein for Design Intelligence, “Adapting for Success in the New Practice Environment” exhorts us to embrace the opportunity that comes with change.  His tips for blowing up the old way we practice involve evaluating everything we do with fresh eyes:

1.      Look at the context of practice much as we would analyze the context of a project site

2.      Adapt for success by being, creative, client-focused, competent (and yes even with new technologies or design methods, Fridstein specifically mentions sustainability and BIM), cost-effective, collaborative and global.

3.      Design the design firm by looking at ways you can serve clients better while inspiring and nurturing your employees more.  Last century’s model with its pretext that you are lucky just to be working doesn’t cut it anymore (yes, he does bandy about the term “the new normal” to express the fact that change is here to stay.  I am choosing to forgive him for that because otherwise it’s an insightful piece).

As my friend, life coach Jane Scott Ashley once told me, “Life isn’t what’s happening while you cling for dear life to the trapeze you’re on.  It’s what happens when you let go so you can reach the next one.”

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.

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.

Everyday Miracles: Small Steps and Big Moves

Feast Day May 26

It’s the first anniversary of ThePatronSaintofArchitecture!  A virtual festival to celebrate a year of growth and discovery with all of you, loyal readers from literally every part of the world!  I started this blog to explore the severe disconnect between the work we all want to do and what it feels like is available for us to do. 

As someone who believes that you can design a bus stop and not only have a blast doing it but also innovate the way we understand that type of space, I couldn’t help but believe that my personal crisis of inspiration had less to do with the kind of projects I was working on than the way those projects were managed both internally and externally.  My minor in business and concentration in psychology of habitation and sociology kicked in and I started to really observe how firms market themselves and execute projects. 

What I noticed was that our inspiration isn’t being squashed by all of the things we typically identify: demanding clients, changing delivery methods, new practice requirements, a crappy boss.  It’s being squashed by our own limiting thoughts about what we really want to accomplish.  With all of this floating around in my head as well as the conviction that as architects we can embrace a better way, ThePatronSaintofArchitecture was launched on May 26, 2010 to celebrate the power of design and joy of creation.  (you may now eat your virtual funnel cake).

I’d like to invite you to join the procession through some of our biggest themes of the past year (and visit the hyperlinks to explore previous posts on these themes in more detail):

Set your intention
You can’t give voice to other’s needs until you find your own.  Avoid becoming an architecture bliss-ninny by getting in touch with your values as a designer and the reason you became an architect.  What do you believe about good design?  When was the last time you felt inspired? Explore the enzymes that catalyze your natural creativity into inspiration for innovation to reclaim your creative voice and draw clients and staff into your passion for what you do.

Share the spirit of design
We often fear our clients, believing that we must appease them and started to really pay attention to that dynamic as well. However, when your work and the way you approach projects is in alignment with what you believe about design, clients are drawn to that.  Do it consistently enough and you will actually be sought out by clients who specifically embrace your vision and want you to shake a little of your fairy dust on their project. It’s confidence that inspires and we must never let our clients lose sight of the end goal- a great project

Understand the culture and the community
That pre-design phase is the single biggest differentiator of a mediocre and great project. learning how to tame the many-headed monster of a large client with lots of silos and specialty departments.  So is learning to translate between what a client really wants and what they are actually saying.

Have mercy on the end user
The best projects are the ones that resonate with the people who have to live, work, play or heal in them every day.  Understanding their point of view transforms what would otherwise just be sculpture into architecture.  Do what no other art form can do- design for the fourth and fifth dimensions (time and light).

Many are called
The practice of architecture has changed, becoming both more broad-based and more specialized and certainly more integrated- sustainability, evidence based design, biophilic design, and new construction delivery methods can actually be used to enrich design when we embrace them as part of our process instead of viewing them as distractions.  Don’t fall for the trick that design is an isolated individual experience.  You are an architect not a painter.  Your art has to work.  It s not born from late nights before a deadline and a great unveiling ceremony.  You cannot, no matter how great the talent, conjure up the perfect design based solely on your instincts.  Seeing the value of evidence based design, sustainability, integrated project delivery and many other trends affecting the design and construction industry to improve and inform the design process as well as as a means to convince your client of the value of your design decisions is the path to salvation. and dismiss the distraction of messy user requests, budget annoyances, team relationship issues.

Use your gifts
When you fail to know yourself and what you uniquely can offer, your desperation causes you to focus on winning instead of creating.  How many times has our profession been undermined from within by a relentless need to compete, to get any job at any cost? Swim to more placid waters where you can focus on creating great work that those swimming in the bloody water of the shark tank don’t have the energy to do.  Let them devour themselves consuming ever scarcer resources while you focus on the abundance of limitless possibility.

Look for some exciting new features and resources in the next few weeks, including ways to work with me to sharpen your own career vision or the vision for your next project.  I hope you will continue to share your insights and stories with everyone (use the intentions page to help our community manifest your answers) as we look for guidance in navigating a profession that for many of us is actually a vocation.