A bit over a week ago I went to a concert. It was one of those concerts where there are two opening acts and the whole thing takes place in one of those small venues where your feet may stick to the floor. They typically hold a couple hundred people at one time.
Those particular musicians had songs that had been in movies and television shows along with a few that may have been played on the radio, yet if I were to mention the name of them, chances are most people hadn’t heard their names. I realized that for every Aerosmith or Madonna, there are probably dozens if not hundreds of bands and singers who work full-time in the music industry and only make a typical middle-class living, like a teacher or nurse.
I’m thinking about the career I’ve chosen and what it is that I really wanted to do with it when I started down the path and what it is that I want now. I don’t know if they are the same thing or not anymore. There are iconic buildings and projects that are either known around the world or perhaps within a country or even within just a region that were designed by a starchitect. A starchitect is essentially the rock stars of the architecture profession. They are the Bon Jovi’s, the George Strait’s, the Lady Gaga’s of the building design industry. Most of the time they are listed as the design architect and there’s a local architecture firm who is the architect of record. The architect of record stamps the drawings because they are the ones who actually figure out how to put it together and make it work. Ultimately, the legal responsibility lies with the architect of record.
I realized that architects and musicians have something in common. For every starchitect, there are hundreds of architects who simply go to the office every day and work on buildings. I would venture to say that most of those types of architects don’t even have a say in how a strip mall should look, they are just tasked with making sure it’s weather tight and that all the equipment is located in the right place. At least that’s the type of architect I’ve been.
There’s a pretty common saying among the profession that only about 10% of what we do is actually design, the rest is coordination, problem-solving, code reviews, drawings, material research and technical details. For me, I would say that it has been closer to .5% – 1%, maybe. I don’t mind doing all that other stuff if it means that I’m executing something that I either envisioned or was part of a team who created the design. I need to have some type of ownership in the overall design and integrity of the project in order for me to get behind all the technical and team coordination process. I’ve told several people over the last year that I feel like a factory worker in dress shoes. When someone hands over a design and says to me that I’m supposed to execute the rest of it, I’m just a drafter, a worker bee. I used to think that this was just my inability to find good employers and that I was just in the wrong place, but after 10+ years and multiple different employers, today I sit here and wonder if it’s really just me. Yes, this is a direct contradiction to the only other post I’ve written thus far under the architecture category, but that’s where I’m at today. Unemployed, again, wondering what to do with the rest of my life, wishing I could make some type of positive difference in the world through my profession.
