Tag: associate aia

I take care of our office plants. Since we have big windows and lots of lovely northern and eastern light, the aloes and jade and funky grafted cacti are likely to do well, regardless of my tender and loving care. But still–I water them each week, check the soil, trim off the dead stuff, and occasionally re-pot them when they outgrow their surroundings. I look forward to this every week, this careful observation of living things that, magically, slowly, and consistently grow and change each week.

But my favorite is when I get to plant propagations–the little baby buds that plants send up through the soil when a plant is healthy and happy. These propagations are joyful little reminders that amidst the stillness of the soil, something magical is happening underneath–growth–that is invisible until it breaks the surface.

September is a month of transition, a switch from summer heat to autumn chill, and all the change that it brings. Design students return to school, settling into their studios, mapping out their schedules, and diving into projects. Firms are coming out of the juggle of summer vacation schedules, keeping projects afloat as best they can. Young professional architects are in the thick of projects, mapping out all that needs to be accomplished by the end of the year. September tilts forward, where the slow and often-invisible growth of the year starts to show itself.

Progress and growth can be difficult to see. In design school, you churn towards reviews and exams, sometimes struggling to see if any of the knowledge is really sticking. Professionally, staying on top of a dynamic design environment takes time and effort, let alone making space for mastering new skills while trying to take on more responsibilities, pass your exams, finish your hours, keep track of your time, and still manage to live a little outside of work. Sometimes it can seem endless, that churning without seeing tangible progress. But perhaps–like the windowsill plant–each week is a little more water, a little more sunlight, a little more knowledge and growth to be cultivated and observed. For architecture professionals at all stages of our careers, growth often happens little by little, in practicing small skills over and over, trying something slightly different, learning from the past. We learn by watching closely from someone we respect, then trying it ourselves. We grow by taking well-intentioned risks and using the good (or bad) consequences as learning opportunities.

As I water the plants today, I don’t see any new propagations, but I know they are waiting–somewhere–under the surface. And so I sit at my desk once again, look at the too-long list of things I don’t know how to deal with, and remember that growth happens in small bits, in tackling something challenging, in asking for help, in learning something new every day.

In solidarity and action,
Michael Spory, Associate AIA
spory@vmdo.com

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I first learned how to swim from my cousin Jill, who was a lifeguard. She was visiting from Idaho for a few weeks and decided to give me lessons at a neighbor’s pool. In the shallow end, she taught my gangly 8-year-old self how to breathe so I didn’t get water up my nose, how to float, how to kick and move my arms, how to trust the water when my tippee toes could no longer reach the bottom. I was never a great swimmer, but her lessons helped me let go of the wall, go under the floating rope, and explore the foreboding and exhilarating world of the Deep End.

In design education, our architectural training begins in the abstract, working on theoretical building programs, undeveloped sites, imagined clients. And our studio work, thankfully, lives mostly unbuilt lives as we begin stumbling through the complexity, wonder, and gravity of architectural design while (mostly) shielded from the harsher realities of crafting buildings that will outlive us. We graduate and begin our first jobs, learning how to be professionals for the first time, entering the shallow end of our working lives. We pick up redlines on a to-be-stamped project, listen in (blankly) as our manager chats with an engineer about an uncoordinated ceiling mishap, call product reps to discuss material dimensions, track our reimbursables. It can be a great place, the shallow end, as a practice area for testing our knowledge, for soaking up advice, for having someone check your work, for throwing out ideas to push the envelope. But it is also a stepping stone, a learning opportunity, a temporary place.

Because at some point, we start treading in deeper water. Sometimes it’s a gentle foray; other times, it’s a big toss into the Olympic pool. You present directly to a client. You do code review without backup. You somehow end up leading a coordination meeting. You talk to your attorney and review a contract. You have an answer when a younger coworker asks a technical question about ceiling grids. You look down in the metaphoric pool, and you are swimming, and the bottom of the pool is far beneath you. I wonder how this happens, this gradual transformation from young professional to (semi) confident architect, and I continue to be inspired by young professionals who have stepped up over the last 18 months, and how firms and managers can proactively nurture emerging folks to swim in deeper waters to keep us from floundering. From freshest new grad to veteran partner, I wonder if that process never ends, as we all find gaps in our knowledge, create space for mentorship, and walk the fine line between confidence and humility. Learning to swim in the deep end is a never-ending process.

Sometimes I look around (either the office or the virtual attendee list) in awe at the skills and knowledge of my coworkers–the masters of code recall, the detailing experts, the meticulous managers, the boundless designers, the savvy leaders. Amidst these folks, I wonder how it looks when I ask for help or acknowledge something I don’t know. But I also am inspired when students and emerging professionals speak up and shoulder the responsibility that architecture demands. Hopefully, we can keep welcoming our forays into the deep end.

In solidarity and action,
Michael Spory, Associate AIA
spory@vmdo.com

My mom has been a kindergarten educator for over 30 years, and she is amazing at it. She really is. In the big big world of education, she has found her zone by focusing on the nuances of early childhood development, while loving learning and teaching kids to keep loving how to learn. She’s a specialist through a career of lifelong curiosity shaped by her passion.

I have always been a little jealous of experts like her, the specialists I sit next to in the office who seem to find joy in burrowing deeply into something and becoming an absolute whiz. The woman who seems to know everything about customized Revit workflows, or the person who can recall code nuances and egress exceptions with shocking ease. BIM specialists, construction gurus, material specifiers, coding hackers–I wish I could be more like you. I admire folks with that deeply mined and cultivated knowledge–but also can get a little frustrated with myself in comparison.

As a curious and well-meaning generalist in the world of design, I aspire to bring that level of dedicated focus and passion that makes me a uniquely specialized designer. But I must confess that I get overwhelmed when I see just how much more I have to learn as an architect. One of the reasons I was originally drawn to architecture was because it really seems like you have to know something about just about everything–a career that can keep expanding without ever getting boring. Architects draw on history, art, sociology, math, economics, marketing, physics, politics…the list grows even longer as I think about it. We are generalists, but that broad knowledge base has to get down to nuts and bolts much more quickly that I anticipated. As a young designer, I have often felt overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite fine-grained details I still need to learn to get better at my job, even just to take my first licensing exam or figure out how to confidently document a drawing and spec for window flashing. In that vast ocean of skills, concepts, practices, and information that architects need to know–how do I find my zone, my own unique focus?

Unlike me, maybe you have known where you wanted to focus the minute you applied to design school, and have the drive to laser in on a specific portion of the field–energy modelling, material science, interior design. Maybe you stumbled on a passion and followed it down the rabbit hole–construction detailing, marketing pitches and presentations, modelmaking. Or maybe you are a collage of experiences and curiosities–some Photoshop and aesthetic skills, perhaps a knack for communication or writing, a love of solving problems, a bit of this and that in terms of project experience. Not an empty slate, nor a Swiss army knife, nor a surgical scalpel. In our big wide world of architecture, how do we find our zone?

My mom-the-kindergarten-teacher has been honing her teaching craft for a long time. My first boss could sketch squiggly diagrams that seemed easy until I realized they were drawn at precise scales and informed by years of practical knowledge. My current coworkers are whizzes at things I still struggle with–and I am grateful and humbled by each of them. As we grow as design professionals, these experiences and passions hopefully start to crystallize, leading us to lifelong curiosity and learning about the expanding boundaries of design. I am still stumbling on, discovering that the loose threads of my experiences stitch together into something resembling the expertise of a specialist.

Finding your zone is a continuing process, sometimes halting, occasionally clear, and hopefully full of the good kind of surprises that keep us emerging professionals curious about where we can direct our unique voices and talents in our careers. Our offices and communities across Virginia–along with ourselves–will bloom when that can happen.

In solidarity and action,
Michael Spory, Associate AIA
spory@vmdo.com

Mistakes happen. They happen all the time. But they especially happen when you are doing things for the first time. Like when you forget to put north arrows or door swings during that early pinup in design
school. Or you put chairs too close together, forgetting that people have to walk between the rows. An
unpinned family in Revit. An unexamined set of meeting minutes. A wall section with the air barrier on the
wrong side of the insulation. Not backing up. Keynoting the wrong spec section. Not asking for help soon
enough.

Learning how to be an architect can be a tightrope. Not enough knowledge and experience to move
quickly, but always pressed for time. Move too fast and you miss critical details, or you have to redo
something so it takes even longer. You want to be independent and showcase your growth and initiative,
but also need to ask for help to set things up correctly the first time before you barge ahead. Things that
take your boss 10 minutes might take you an hour. Things that seem simple–a lighting grid, a corner
detail, a presentation slide–get more involved when consultants and specifications and schedules and
contracts come up. And you miss things, sometimes without even realizing it.

To be a designer is to take risks, and to take risks means to invite mistakes and expose your professional (and sometimes personal) vulnerabilities. I certainly know what it’s like to realize you are in over your head, to be given a task and a deadline with no clue how to even begin, how it is to feel alone with no one around to help you because it’s a pandemic and the only living thing nearby is a houseplant. At that moment, it can be easy to hide and sit back, but I have learned that growing as a designer means exploring your mistakes, owning them, and asking for help early and often. Getting a building planned, drawn, and built requires more knowledge, time, and attention than any one person can have, let alone young designers tackling it for the first time. So even with the most dogged quality control processes in a firm, we still learn from the redlines, the busted dimensions, the misspellings, even as we hope to never see them again.

Your growth as a young designer is the inextricable balancing act of learning quickly and working humbly,
continually asking for help when you need it, and offering it when asked. In bravely surrendering the
veneer of the having-all-the-answers kind of architect, we open ourselves up to new ideas, better
processes, established rules, and gleaned expertise from the generations of architects before us, and the
wisdom of the communities that surround us. Some designers will tread longstanding paths, while others
will break new ground, each on their own pathway towards professional excellence and vulnerability. On
our own paths, we continue to learn from our own shortcomings and share that growth with others.
Mistakes happen, and they happen to the best and worst among us. We’ve all been there, and it’s never
fun, but it is inevitable in the iterative and collaborative world of real-life design.

In solidarity and action,
Michael Spory, Associate AIA
spory@vmdo.com

This is not the summer I was expecting—and I suspect I am not alone. I bike each day to empty rented office space, slide the door shut, and try to design via annotated snips, neverending chat boxes, texted photographs of sketches, and professional-from-the-waist-up video calls. Each week, I pray that my job as a designer is still viable when I show up to work—even as I feel that ever-present, low-grade anxiety that our firms can keep the lights on, get new contracts remotely, meet payroll, and manage to come out of this pandemic and protest-filled season. It is an anxious time to be a designer.

With so much out of our control, what do we do with our time when we as emerging designers are trying to find our way when faced with colossal uncertainty for the second time in the last 15 years? Whether we are students facing the most challenging job market in a century (something 2009 me could hardly have thought) or young designers trying to learn the professional ropes while working from your dining room table or even slightly seasoned professionals trying to take that next step—the opportunities for adding to our architectural foundations certainly look different than they did four months ago. 

No matter where you are at in your architectural career, developing new skills has never been more important. Below are a few tools from my (admittedly meagre) toolbox that perhaps you might find useful: 

• Find a champion. A former boss asked me every week when my next ARE exam was, and the minute I told him I’d passed one, he would ask when the next one would be. Passing the ARE exams are difficult—more power to you if you think otherwise—and getting all your AXP hours requires not just effort and luck, but the scheduling, mentoring, and advocacy of the higher ups. Find a mentor who will not only support you when you need help, but will hold you accountable and push you towards your goals. 
• Reach back to bring others with you. I am extremely privileged, and I have benefitted not just from the graciousness of mentors and colleagues, but from active systems of whiteness and patriarchy that get me further than any effort of my own could have. We begin disassembling these systems by kicking down doors for other people. Be one of those people who advocates for others to join you at the table. Or better yet, make your own table.   
• Take aim at an actual credential.  Schedule the next exam. Take the night class. Block out two nights a week to study. Get new letters after your name.
• Bring a non-traditional passion to work. You are a musician? Certainly useful in detailing an auditorium. Had a knack for economics? You might just be plucked for budgeting discussions. Bringing your whole self to work, with all the passions and hobbies you learned outside of studio, adds flavor that benefits your design work, and contributes to a broader expertise that might just get you promoted. 
• Cultivate writing and speaking. Good design is communication, whether visual, verbal, written, or otherwise, and being an effective communicator means managers can trust you. Read good writing. Surround yourself with well-crafted words. Submit drafts to architectural publications. Ask smarter people for edits. Go to Toastmasters. Effective communicators get in the door, stay in the room, and bring in the work. 
• Identify a gap and step into it. Look around and notice what tasks and roles are getting outsourced or underserved. Facilitation, spec writing, stair detailing, historic preservation analysis, or whatever it may be; being able to keep key services in-house ultimately benefits any bottom line, and those added value skills get you noticed for specialized expertise that exponentially increases your value as an employee. 
• Ask to learn about non-design tasks. While less glamorous than elegant sketches or detailed renderings, learning the nuances of business development, staffing projections, financial statements, or marketing lingo builds a foundation towards leadership. Ask to look over drafts. Be curious about the behind-the-scenes maneuverings and decisions.
• Build something. What wondrous insights—and humility—come from actually having to buy materials, measure, and assemble something into existence. Plus, you can always gift it to a non-designer if it ends up wonky.

An old mentor gave this advice—make yourself invaluable. Architecture is a big field with lots of ways to get crowded out when the projects run thin. Broadening your skills not only keeps you a step ahead, but keeps our creative minds from calcifying and retreating into what we already know. 

But perhaps more importantly, now is a time to also cultivate kindness and justice—attributes and skills that never fail to disappoint and elevate.

In solidarity and action,

Michael Spory, Associate AIA
spory@vmdo.com

Just a Few Fun Things to Click On

Something to Talk about with Your Boss and Coworkers: AIA has developed Guides for Equitable Practice, for resourcing architects to make the business and professional case for ensuring more equitable practices in our firms, particularly towards black and minority individuals and clients. This is an important baseline, especially the personal stories in this section. Ask your supervisors if your firm has discussed and implemented these guides. 

A deeply discounted Amber Book Subscription: AIA Virginia is offering a $50, 2-month subscription to the Amber Book. Sign up here.

Something to Sign Up For: AIA Virginia has formed a formal relationship with the newly launched Virginia NOMA Chapter. This is an important step, and is an effort that needs people of all skin colors to actively support minority architects. Fill out this form to show your support and interest.

Some Free Stuff for the ARE Exams: I just signed up for my last ARE exam–come join me! AIA National is offering their ARE prep course ArchiPrep FOR FREE for associate members until August 31. If you need a study buddy, please reach out! There are study groups in every corner of the state to get connected to. 

Some accounts to follow: Pascale Sablan is more than a rising star–she’s here to stay, and her design work and advocacy for Black architects are worth your Instagram follow. Also find Architecture Is Too White and BIPOC in Architecture and read the stories emerging from melanized voices in design. 

Something from AIA Richmond: AIA Richmond is partnering with Venture Richmond to launch “Picnic in a Parklet,” a program designed to assist Richmond restaurants and other businesses with Phase 2 of Forward Virginia. Through this new partnership with the City of Richmond, business owners can receive design and permitting assistance for their requests for more outdoor space, particularly parklets. If you know of similar initiatives elsewhere, please reach out.

Something to keep in your Google tab: This spreadsheet was started by designer Dong-Ping Wong, and it is a growing list of BIPOC firms across the nation. If you have a firm in Virginia that is not on this list–add it! He also specifically created it as a job-application resource for young designers of different races and ethnicities looking for BIPOC-led firms, so it also serves as a hiring resource.