Spectacles, Scarf, Imported Shoes
So you want to be an archimatect.
Just because you've got a certified first-professional degree in hand doesn't mean you get to call yourself an architect. Theres the small matter of several years of internship, plus a litany of exams to write.
Not to mention the weekly whinging.
2005
- May 1
Back to work. Shaving more frequently, checking email more frequently. Also, clean clothes.
- May 8
Your salary-negotiating tactic consists of expounding how little you know. Brilliant.
- May 15
Drawing acoustic tiles in bathroom vestibules, you realize how much you missed the glamour.
- May 22
“It is a character flaw of many architects that they try to express themselves through their eyewear. I strongly urge them to work on this.”
—Terence Riley, chief architecture and design curator at New York’s MOMA, as quoted in The New York Times Magazine.
Ouch.
- May 29
The siren allure of paperwork: It won’t get built if you don’t issue an approved Notice of Proposed Change.
- June 5
Nice light you specified. Too bad it’s Italian. That means it’s gorgeous, late-arriving, and too expensive for God.
- June 12
Contractor: “Did we make the hole big enough?”
You: “I don’t know. Can you read a tape measure and count to three?”
You (actually): “No. Keep digging”
- June 19
“We love it, but we’re worried it’s too contemporary for the neighbourhood.”
“So why did you call us?”
- June 26
3DS Max not doing the trick. SketchUp to the rescue. Again. Surprise.
- July 3
So. What do you know about commercial kitchens? It’s not enough.
- July 10
You accuse your wife of having more pottery books than you have architecture books. Then you find two more unpacked boxes, and have to eat crow.
- July 17
You’ve concluded that talking to one particular contractor is exactly like talking to the wall. You can explain things repeatedly, but the wall just isn’t going to understand. It’s not in its nature. Also, walls don’t read drawings.
- July 24
Being leaned on for so-called architectural advice by friends building a house—without the aid of an architect—when it’s already framed. This must be how dentists and doctors feel at cocktail parties.
- July 31
Stop. Time to clear out the MS Outlook inbox. 200MB of attachments? Good grief. This isn’t Gmail, you know.
- August 7
The contractor has been playing a game of musical chairs with his jobs, and as luck would have it, your client is presently out. Mistake. You hope the contactor will enjoy his working weekend.
- August 14
Judging by the progress on site, the contractor would only have enjoyed his weekend if he likes framing chimneys in his spare time.
- August 21
You call your project’s structural engineer, and announce your name. “Oh, crap,” she says. That’s the reaction you like to hear.
- August 28
You like to think you’re getting a little less useless around here. You’re probably delusional.
- September 4
"Has the consultant called you back?”
“No. He never calls me.”
“Let’s go over there and kick his ass.”
“I’m a passivist.”
“Ug. It’s so hard to get good help these days.”
- September 11
Scouring electrical lighting layouts looking for luminaires, you realize you never considered how the practice of architecture occassionally approximates Where’s Waldo? That, and Richard Scarry.
- September 18
“Why is the hot tub too low?”
“You dug the hole too deep.”
As you’ve said before, geometry is a harsh mistress.
- September 25
Multimedia shows always suck. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.
- October 2
Happiness is a warm shop drawing.
- October 9
If you don’t explicitly show how the top-mount continuous finger pull is to be installed, you run the risk of having someone screw straight through it, onto the cabinet face.
- October 16
Is it possible to overdose on SketchUp? Absolutely. If you don’t push/pull another volume in your life, that would be peachy.
- October 23
Okay, so the firm didn’t hire that new body like they expected. You’re millworking yourself into a bit of a lather.
- October 30
If there’s a method of practicing architecture that doesn’t involve contact cement, you don’t want to hear about it.
- November 6
A friend and co-worker leaves for greener pastures. You wait until 4:30 on his last day before telling him to “Get the hell out of my new desk.” Sweet.
- November 13
You work until 02:00, put in a 15 hour day, then show up the following morning one-and-a-half hours later than usual, and you still arrived earlier than two-thirds of the office. That’s an overdeveloped sense of work duty.
- November 20
On your performance review form under the heading Strengths, you wrote the usual adjectives, and added “sparkling wit,” and “great hair.” And it seemed to fly.
- November 27
You waste a weekend looking for a new couch. Something tasteful and contemporary, from which you might enjoy watching a hockey game. Good luck. If there’s one thing you’ve discovered, it’s that couches resembling Le Corbusier’s Le Grand Confort are not particularly confortable.
- December 4
On a just-started renovation project, you’re endeavouring to save—or at least salvage—the 6’0"-diameter circular wall dome in baked enamel medium bronze finish (read: brown bubble window). No one else seems to share your enthusiasm for relics of the ’70s.
- December 11
This week you officially moved from a 20-person office to North America’s third largest architectural firm, without changing your desk. Interesting.
- December 18
It's official. Let the Foster-mania—in the city and in the office—begin.
- December 25
You take a week off, and studiously avoid thinking at all about work. Then you spend the first part of the week doing millwork drawings for your house. Lame.
- January 1
Two different partners book your time for some computer modeling, for the same two days. As a compromise, you all agree that you will spend one day on each project. Afer working through both nights to meet their deadlines, you realize the only one compromised was you.
- January 8
There is no such thing as a narrow fridge with a water dispenser on the door. There is also no such thing as a fridge water dispenser without ice.
- January 15
In a client meeting, you break out the Barton Myers detail where the air distribution duct runs just above the floor in front of the curtain wall. And the client doesn't run away screaming. Odd.
- January 22
Sorting out some 3DS Max bsics, you finally learn what is an Oren-Nayer-Blinn shader. Handy.
- January 29
With some difficulty, you manage to explain to your accountant that even though your wife is working as an office administrator and you are perportedly some sort of professional, since she works for an oil company and you work for an architect, you won’t be making more money than her anytime soon.
- Februarry 5
You sit in on a groundwork meeting for the largest skyscraper in western Canada. Big plans. But do you even believe in skyscrapers anymore?
- February 12
You write a letter to your local MP—who also happens to be the Prime Minister—explaining how he should move the National Gallery to a disused lot down the block from your house. That’s one way to drum up some business. (To date though, there has been no tender.)
- February 19
Vacation! You travel to a faraway place, largely devoid of architecture: Maui. Unless kitsch coutns as architecture. Maybe postmodernism.
- February 26
“Which sunblock did you use?”
“15.”
“15? Why didn’t you just use baby oil?”
Ouch.
- March 5
You crack open the LEED reference guide and begin reading in earnest. LEED is boring. Much chai required.
- March 12
The client wants a steel gate. The City wants a cedar gate. The DP drawing says cedar gate. What the City wants, the City gets.
Does this seem just a little insane?
- March 19
You can’t deny it, you’re in a funk. Time for a fresh project.
- March 26
You let slip to the firm’s photographer that you have some of his images on your server that haven’t been paid for. An easy mistake, you didn’t know. Still, shitstorm.
- April 2
After numerous delays, pricing for your 600 square foot addition comes in. At 250% of the budgeted price. Awesome.
You pick a fresh red pen out of the supplies closet.
- April 9
So mosaic tile is four times more expensive than the 2x2s. Chalk that one up to experience.
- April 16
A City memo flits through the office, stating that horizontal cedar channel siding is climbable, and therefore not recommended.
You jsut can’t make this stuff up.