We’ve already talked about this. You’re preparing your final project (or thesis project). You’ve gone over everything in your head a thousand times; the presentation to the panel, your project, your model, your memory, your words. You go ahead with it, but think you’ll be lousy. Then you think just the opposite, you will be successful and it will all be worth it. Then everything repeats itself and you want to call it quits.  You don’t know when this roller coaster is going to end. 

Until the day arrives. You present your project. Explain your ideas. The committee asks you questions. You answer. You realize you know more than you thought you did and that none of the scenarios you imaged over the past year got even close to what really happened in the exam. The committee whisper amongst themselves. The presentation ends and they ask you to leave for a while. Outside you wait an eternity, the minutes crawling slowly. Come in, please. The commission recites a brief introduction and you can’t tell whether you were right or wrong. The commission gets to the point.

You passed! Congratulations, you are now their new colleague and they all congratulate you on your achievement. The joy washes over you despite the fatigue that you’ve dragging around with you. The adrenaline stops pumping. You spend weeks or months taking a much-deserved break. You begin to wonder: Now what?

The university, the institution that molded you into a professional (perhaps even more so than you would have liked), hands you the diploma and now you face the job market for the first time (that is if you haven’t worked before). Before leaving and defining your own markers for personal success (success is no longer measured with grades or academic evaluations), we share 9 lessons to face the world now that you’re an architect.

1. College gives you skills, not a job

© Nicolás Valencia

Let’s start with the first lesson: the university remains a symbol of upward mobility. Many of us are the first architects or even the first college graduates in our families, and being professional is a sure fire way to get a good job,  economic stability, and all that (depending on what you studied). If you weren’t born with a desire to study architect or it isn’t your mission in your life, it is likely that this aspect was more important, an idea reinforced by the media, by constantly publishing the rankings of the best-paying careers. 

However, it’s a mistake to believe that studying architecture guarantees you a job. A mistake that you don’t notice when you enter the job market (again, only if you’ve never worked before) and then you realize that your first jobs are not what you thought they’d be like in college, or what society thinks an architect is.

But if we understand that college forms skills (check the graduate profile of your school), you can visualize what your advantages are and how to apply them to what you’re looking for. A lesson that goes along with the next point. 

2. Not everyone is going to design

© Nicolás Valencia

Throughout your college career, all your courses rotate around the studio. By default, our value as architects is in how well we design things. In fact, the first fifty architectural references that you can think of will be designers. The alleged diversity in education is false: everyone can focus on what they want, as long as it is the same thing. The very final stage of your studies is a funnel: it doesn’t matter what you did during the rest of your time here, we want you to be able to design something, anything, even if just a box.

This moment is particularly complicated for those interested in landscape (in Spain landscape architects can’t even sign their own projects), urban planning, theory, construction, administration, teaching or anything else other than straight up design.

I have friends with great interest and knowledge in urban planning who had a really hard time with their thesis project. They asked them for “just a box” in order  to graduate. The commission did not appreciate “these colored drawings.” My friends thought they’d never get out, but once they got past their thesis projects, their strong will and determination (and of course, the job market) revealed something else.

3. Learn to discuss, negotiate and compromise

© Nicolás Valencia

Mark Wigley, former dean of GASPP says that architecture is “99% hiding 1% displaying”. If those words don’t make sense to you, think back to studio projects. Each architectural design begins with infinite potential layers of information and variables that depend on you, hide them or show them, regulations, technical specialties, budgets, deadlines, sustainability, management, construction, and most importantly, the client. Yes, someone who pays and rightly also has opinions. Because they will. You can count on it.

The university exercises put emphasis on design, they help you develop the technical capabilities we talked about at the beginning. However, in the real world, you should also discuss negotiate and make compromises with the other side of the table. There is no teacher, but there are clients, specialists, and contractors. Do not expect everyone to treat you like a big shot, the rest of the participants feel equally important and that they have something relevant to say and defend. 

4. Learning to work as part of a team

© Nicolás Valencia

Yes, you learned to work together at university, but often your group divided the job up like it was the putting together a car on the assembly line of an automobile factory. When the day came to turn it in, you all met up and tried to put it together mechanically.

Teamwork is more than that, and as in the previous point, it means learning to discuss. In addition, in the professional world there are corporate hierarchies and specialties. Some opinions carry more weight than others (of course they do, it’s your boss), but don’t be afraid to put your position out there, defend it and listen to the rest.

5. Speak clearly. Without poetry. Please.

© Nicolás Valencia

The architectural language is special. It’s not only special because of the technical concepts that you’ve adopted, but also because of all those adverbs, nouns and verbs that are seemingly profound and poignant but devoid of all meaning. Why do we use them? Well your professors really liked them and they bring up fond memories of architecture school. However, in the eyes of society it is one of the reasons why our profession isn’t taken seriously. We talk funny.

Talking funny is one thing. Another is having a rich, broad and complex language. Saying nothing at all is something else entirely. Examples? Attributing anthropomorphic properties to your project as if it were a pokémon is totally bizarre. Yes, it is a subjective and personal reading on your work, but it is not clear, or directly or convincing. You can put it another way.

Don’t expect someone to understand that a piece “wishes to rest on a hill and look out over society” or that its concept is “a circumstantial dynamic of urban retreat.” You aren’t saying anything. We talked about this a while ago and a selection of “150 weird words that only architects use.” Some advice? Save the list somewhere and try to eliminate or replace them.

6. The official wage chart is useless.

© Nicolás Valencia

Don’t get frustrated when you see that the official rate scale for architects doesn’t match your own experience. Don’t get upset with your school or your dean. For this, there are two answers, the long one and the short one.

Let’s go with the short answer: this goes beyond architecture. In a market of supply and demand, the oversupply of architects makes for cheaper labor.

7. Self-promotion. Having ideas isn’t enough.

© Nicolás Valencia

Before we had Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Now there’s Bjarke Ingels. Whether we like it or not, the most well-known architects are also those who do the most self-promoting. Instead of waiting for clients, they offer proposals. They established connections with other fields. They rejected the status quo of the occupation and breakthrough. They did it their way. They published, presented, and discussed. They were convinced of their principles and pushed to make them a reality.

Pro tip: It’s not enough to have the best ideas if you can’t get them across. If our profession is an enrichment to society and we’re convinced that we can contribute, then you should be able to communicate. Don’t expect that, after working quietly for decades, somebody is going to show up on your doorstep holding the Pritzker (or whatever award that you care about the most).

The best  (and strongest) ideas are dispersed, spread, discussed, reformulated, expanded and compared.

8.  Is the history of architecture a social construct or “Why don’t we know more prominent women architects?”

© Nicolás Valencia

I am of the opinion that history is a social construct. Its construction is the story of people who write it, schools that influence it, and institutions that validate it. In the case of architecture, it is quite clear. Don’t you find it strange that there is such little recognition of women in our discipline? Cases of injustice are numerous and, fortunately, we are uncovering more and more sexism from the twentieth century. Unfortunately, that vision of architecture is what was then passed on to generations of students. Furthermore, this also lead us to look at ethnic minorities. We are not just talking about history because the wage gap remains scandalous.

The marginalization of Scott Brown in connection to the 1991 Pritzker award of her husband, Robert Venturi. Or the constant prosecution of Zaha Hadid, even when she was already a shining star in the architect world. In the daily lives of thousands of architects, injustice knows no cultural or economic barriers, such as the 19 cases rescued by the New York Times on daily inequality. 

How many women have individually won the Pritzker? One, Zaha. How many Latinos? Four. Africans? Zero. Are there no architects of this magnitude or are they invisible? In the end, architecture (and its history) is a long reading, it is assumed knowledge to be the official version and it is then taught it to us. We must avoid repeating that mistake. It’s time to confront this history, expand it, make it more complex and diverse.

9. You don’t know anything, but you will learn everything along the way.

 

© Nicolás Valencia

We left university thinking that we don’t know anything. We went to an all-you-can-eat buffet and chose a little of everything, but at the end of the meal, we were still not satisfied. This is one of the major frustrations of getting a degree it inhibits us from applying for new jobs and positions, or to try new things.

Don’t worry, because you will learn everything along the way. Can’t you fill out the required city forms? Surely you have a teacher or a friend who already knows how. Contact them. Don’t you know how to construct a foundation on wet ground? Research it, speak to somebody, review old plans, ask someone who already has been working for a while. There is always someone who’s already done it. It’s not the end of the world.

You need to try, fail, figure out, and accomplish.

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Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

Dutch firm de Architekten Cie. have revealed their design for the Galileo Reference Centre, a new data collection center for the Galileo satellite system in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Primarily housing office space and computer rooms, the center has been designed as a highly efficient and resilient building which can be adapted into the future.   

Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

The structurally lightweight building sits adjacent to a small bay of sand dunes in the Noordwijk Space Business Park. Wildlife and nature are brought into the building through green terraces aligned to the main functional areas, and the connection between indoor and outdoor is maintained through a “social lobby” which opens up the ground floor. Also functioning as the main circulatory space, the lobby distributes users throughout the building and provides the functional services for the first floor.

Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

The life-cycle of the building was a driving factor of the design, Primarily comprised of wood, a replenishable resource, the building utilizes prefabricated and composite structures easily disassembled and reassembled. The benefits of using prefabrication, and specifically the pine of the main structure, first floor and roof are threefold. Firstly, the structure is light enough to rest upon the sand; secondly, the structural columns are able to double as wooden partition elements; and lastly, the modular design allows maximum reduction of waste. 

Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

The facade features a singular repeated component in three different transparencies, from fully opaque to fully transparent. This provides necessary permeability and enclosure in required areas of the building. The future-proofing of the building is exhibited here again, as the interchangeability of the panels will allow the facade to be adapted to internal configuration changes as the building’s program changes.

Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

Alongside the minimization of material wastage, the building is designed to be highly energy conscious. A series of measurements determined that it will be 35% more efficient than currently required by Dutch building regulations. Construction of the building has been accelerated due to the necessity of its completion and is due to be completed in July 2017.

Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

• Architects: de Architekten Cie
• Location: Kapteynstraat 1, 2201 BB Noordwijk, The Netherlands
• Architect In Charge: Pero Puljiz
• Design Team: Eric van Noord, Igor Sladoljev, Jeanne Leung, Sander Moerman, Boris van Gorkom, Nico Bos, Andrew Page, Benjamin Russis, Audrey Fischer
• Area: 1500.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Courtesy of de Architekten Cie.

News via de Architekten Cie.

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© Marc Goodwin

• Architects: Aalto University Wood Program
• Location: Kasarmikatu 24, 00101 Helsinki, Finland
• Studio Name: Wood Program 2016
• Area: 35.0 sqm
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Marc Goodwin, LéaPfister, Courtesy of Aalto University Wood Program

• Tutors: Pekka Heikkinen (FIN), Philip Tidwell (USA), Willem van Bolderen (NLD)
• Students: Alexander Rantanen Barstad (NOR), Akın Cakıroglu (TUR), Eduardo Wiegand (CHL), Ignacio Traver Lafuente (ESP), Ivan Segato (ITA), Käbi Noodapera Ramel (SWE), Kristin Ekkerhaugen (NOR), Léa Pfister (FRA), María Inés Quirarte (MEX), Nicklas Ivarsson (SWE), Satoshi Iiyama (JPN), Sini Koskinen (FIN), Stephanie Jazmines (USA), Taeho Noh(KOR), Tanja Vallaster (AUT), Tomoyo Nakamura (JPN), Toni Lahti (FIN), Yuko Konse (JPN)

© LéaPfister

A modular living system by the Wood Program at Aalto University

As the Nordic countries have recently been experiencing fluctuations in population, it has become apparent that there is a severe shortage of temporary housing solutions for students, asylum seekers, displaced residents, and others with similar short-term needs. 

© LéaPfister

Diagram

Courtesy of Aalto University Wood Program

Courtesy of Aalto University Wood Program

In urban and sub-urban contexts, the pre-fabricated modules can be transported and combined into various configurations to fit numerous sites. Rather than the typical approach of autonomous, deployable containers, Kokoon allows for habitable space that can expand both vertically and horizontally. Additionally, simple approaches to storage, lighting, and spatial division ensure that the interiors are both practical and dignified.

© LéaPfister

Section

© Marc Goodwin

Kokoon is a design / build project from the 2015-2016 Wood Program at Aalto University School of Arts, Design, and Architecture. It was constructed to address the current housing situation in Finland. The three prototype units were finished in Otaniemi and assembled on-site in one day. They are intended to be displayed and used in various locations around Finland over the coming years.

© Marc Goodwin

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The Exposition’s poster, designed by Robert Bonfils. ImageCourtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum

The end of the First World War did not mark the end of struggle in Europe. France, as the primary location of the conflict’s Western Front, suffered heavy losses in both manpower and industrial productivity; the resulting economic instability would plague the country well into the 1920s.[1] It was in the midst of these uncertain times that the French would signal their intention to look not to their recent troubled past, but to a brighter and more optimistic future. This signal came in the form of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exposition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industries) of 1925 – a landmark exhibition which both gave rise to a new international style and, ultimately, provided its name: Art Deco.

via Wikimedia

World’s Fairs were not necessarily new in Europe. Since 1851’s seminal Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace, a multitude of similar fairs drew millions of visitors. This tradition was abruptly cut short by the outbreak of World War One, an interruption that would last until the British Empire Exhibition of 1924.[2] Planning for the International Exposition actually began in 1911, but debate over exhibitor criteria and, eventually, the war would delay the opening until April of 1925.[3]

The Exposition, which occupied both banks of the Seine, was tied together by the Pont Alexandre III, itself built for a previous World’s Fair. Imagevia Wikimedia

The Exposition occupied 57 acres in central Paris, stretching from the Esplanade des Invalides across the Pont Alexandre III to the entrances of the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais.[4] Two-thirds of the allotted land was set aside for various French pavilions; the rest was made available to the other participating nations, most of which were European. Germany was notably unrepresented, as lingering tensions from the war meant they were not invited to join the Exposition until it was too late to organize a national pavilion. The United States was also absent, due to a lack of designers whose work met the requirements laid out for display submissions.[5]

The Dutch Pavilion was an example of Expressionist architecture in a largely Moderne fair. ImageCourtesy of the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut

It was these requirements that would set the 1925 Exposition apart from its forebears. The stipulation that ultimately disqualified American participation was that no design could be based on historical styles – everything was required to be exclusively modern. Though it was hoped that the Exposition would reflect the life of the common person, most products displayed were designer goods aimed at the wealthy elite.[6]

Angular geometry characterized Melnikov’s U.S.S.R. Pavilion. Imagevia Wikimedia

As a result of these same requirements, a variety of contemporary architectural styles were utilized in the Exposition’s many pavilions. The pavilion for the nascent Soviet Union, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, was an angular red and white monument to Russian Constructivism realized in wood and glass. The Dutch pavilion, designed by J.F. Staal, was an Expressionist building composed of red brick. Victor Horta’s design for the Belgian pavilion, meanwhile, eschewed the florid Art Nouveau style for which he was known in favor of a stepped, rectilinear structure more in line with the majority of the French pavilions.[7]

Horta’s Belgian Pavilion was a radical departure from his typically curvilinear Art Nouveau style. Imagevia Wikimedia

Despite the presence of these alternative styles, and even a few historicist entries that defied the fair’s guidelines, it was French art moderne that would feature most prominently at the Exposition. Though it was already popular in France by 1925, the Exposition was the first time that this style would be introduced to an international audience. The global influence of the fair was unmistakable in the following decades; in 1966, another Parisian exhibition would rename the style Art Deco in honor of the Exposition that had popularized it.[8]

The sunburst crowning the entrance to the Galeries Lafayette pavilion is a typical element of Art Deco decoration. Imagevia Wikimedia

Art Deco, despite its innate glorification of—and preoccupation with—modernity, was not Modernist in the strict definition of the term. It was not founded upon principles of rationalist engineering or scientific efficiency, instead using motifs and symbols of modernity as a decorative statement. This differentiated it not only from foreign schools like Constructivism and the Bauhaus, but even from the International Style supported by France’s own Le Corbusier.[9] This difference was readily apparent in Le Corbusier’s L’Esprit Nouveau Pavilion, a model apartment that demonstrated his ruthlessly efficient ‘machine à habiter’ without the stylization which defined Art Deco.[10]

The Bon Marché’s pavilion made use of stepped setbacks, another motif frequently seen in Art Deco buildings. Imagevia Wikimedia

Due to its ornamental nature, it is perhaps unsurprising that the most prominent Art Deco structures at the Exposition were not those of architects or countries, but of French businesses and decorative artists. Several notable Parisian department stores—including the Galeries Lafayette, Le Bon Marché, and Le Printemps—set up elaborate pavilions intended to lure attendees in to admire rooms furnished and decorated with consumer products. The exterior façades of these pavilions utilized several common Art Deco motifs, including stylized floral elements, stepped forms, sunbursts, and zigzags. Representatives from various applied and decorative arts employed similar tactics, from book publishers to famed glassmaker René Lalique; the latter had also designed a massive tiered, obelisk Fontaine Lumineuse (Luminous Fountain) with molded-glass caryatids that stood at the center of a neighboring square.[11]

The Luminous Fountain by Lalique was one of the Exposition’s main centerpieces. Imagevia Wikimedia

The most acclaimed pavilion at the Exposition was the showcase for an individual artist, furniture designer Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann. Designed by Pierre Patout, the Hôtel d’un Collectionneur (House for an Art Collector) consisted of a suite of elegantly-decorated rooms laid out around an ovular Grand Salon at the center. These opulent interiors were contained in a stepped, largely rectilinear building decorated with classical bas-reliefs depicting dancers. Critics admired the elegant modernization of traditional forms which, when paired with the luxurious interiors, ultimately earned the hôtel a reputation as one of the greatest achievements of French Art Deco.[12,13]

The Hôtel d’un Collectionneur was a highlight not just of the Exposition, but of French Art Deco in its entirety. Imagevia paris-pepites.fr

During its six month run, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs attracted roughly sixteen million visitors, creating massive international demand for the style to which it ultimately lent its name. In accordance with the organizer’s aims, the Exposition also established France as the arbiter of taste and fashion in the interwar era; Paris itself was put on display as the world’s most fashionable city.[14] But the ramifications of the Exposition Internationale would spread far beyond Paris. Though several similar world’s fairs would follow in subsequent years (including two more in Paris in 1931 and 1937), none would have such a resounding impact as the one which took place in 1925. Time would eventually move past the frenzy of Art Deco that followed the 1925 Exposition, giving way to Modernism in the wake of the Second World War – but no single event would ever have such a profound effect on global design sensibilities ever again.[15]

Plan drawing of the Hôtel d’un Collectionneur. Imagevia maximeold.net

References
[1] Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “France”, accessed August 09, 2016, [access].
[2] Rydell, Robert W. World of Fairs: The Century-of-progress Expositions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. p3.
[3] Raizman, David Seth. History of Modern Design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004. p155.
[4] Poulin, Richard. Graphic Design and Architecture, a 20th Century History. Beverly, Mass: Rockport Publishers, 2012. p86.
[5] Windover, Michael. Art Deco: A Mode of Mobility. Québec: Presses De L’Université Du Québec, 2012. p120.
[6] Raizman, p155.
[7] Bayer, Patricia. Art Deco Architecture: Design, Decoration, and Detail from the Twenties and Thirties. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1992. p38-40.
[8] Bayer, p12-37.
[9] Pile, John F. A History of Interior Design. New York: Wiley, 2000. p349.|
[10] Bayer, p21-22.
[11] Bayer, p38-46.
[12] “Art Deco: The 1925 Paris Exhibition.” Victoria and Albert Museum. Accessed August 9, 2016. [access].
[13] Bayer, p39.
[14] “Art Deco: The 1925 Paris Exhibition.”
[15] Bayer, p37-38.

• Architects: Various Architects
• Location: Pont Alexandre III, 75008 Paris, France
• Area: 230671.0 sqm
• Project Year: 1925
• Photographs: Courtesy of The Victoria and Albert Museum, via Wikimedia, via paris-pepites.fr, via maximeold.net, Courtesy of the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut

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