The Mid-Sized Firm

This monday will mark my last week of work. Since technically we're on a shortened week, it will really be my last four days. It's been a great job, and thinking about not working makes me think I'll miss working there. Honestly, when I first saw the place I'd be working as a summer intern, I felt a little deflated. 

Consider, you spend two years as an architecture student, coming up with wild ideas, and you get this vague idea in your head about what an architecture firm is like. Since studio focuses on fast-paced, creative exploration and expression, you get this idea that firms are fast paced, cutting edge, fun environments, with either creative mess everywhere or uber-minimalist sleek coolness where everyone wears slim black ties and rolled up sleeves. While firms like that do exist, and get occationally get some attention from the press, the reality is that most architecture firms are just that; firms. They gots biz to do, and furthermore, the vast majority of architecture that gets built is not the cutting edge, Metropolis cover shot. 

Anyway, when I came to my office for the first time, I saw cubicles, I saw people hunched over computers, I saw a small corporate firm that seemed to be producing a lot of very not-Metropolis-worthy architecture. I was kind of expecting something a little more, design-y.This is the first post where I mentioned working in my blog, way back in May of 2006 as an intern:

Today I rose and showered before 7 AM. I wore pleated pants and a belt. In my minivan, I fought the morning traffic to downtown. I wore a tie. I sat in a cubicle and attended an office meeting. I drove home through rushour traffic, in a minivan.

These are new things to me.

 A year later, when I approached graduation, I was asked by the head of HR if I wanted a full-time, salaried position there. It was a time when the Phoenix economy was still booming. It was a time of bounty when architecture workers were jumping from one firm to another since the pickings were so sweet. I'd worked there long enough to know the kind of work they did, and what other firms in the valley were doing.

I decided to take the job anyway, despite my initial misgivings about working in a firm that did civic and educational projects. The working environment was good, I was learning a lot, the people were low-key and friendly, and the salaried offer was very generous, along with the benefits and paid vacations.

In the three years of working full time there, I'm really glad I made that decision. Personally, and professionally, I saw a lot of growth. The firm's commitment to education (they call it "stewardship") pushed me to see all the different aspects of the business of architecture. I was invited to meetings with clients, product representatives, consultants, and contractors. I was taken out in the field. They sent me on field trips to other buildings, to conferences. They paid for me to take a 3 day Revit class, and told me not to worry about coming in during those days. I worked on projects from programming through construction administration, which is pretty rare for an architecture firm of our size. I got to design, which is why I got into this field in the first place.

More ambiguously, or ambivalently, work has changed how I view architecture; its nature, its role in the world, what it can or should be. My view of architecture is colored by what I've done and seen. It would have been different if I'd been working at a national corporate firm, or at a four-person firm. I think my design philosophy has also changed. I'm a lot more aware of building systems, of structure.

And of course, it goes without saying that taking that position kept me employed throughout the recession. I saw people in the firm being let go, in various waves of layoffs. The first round was hard, and they had to keep letting go of better and better people. But my firm was nothing to hearing about the gradual bloodbath in the industry. Scores of small boutique firms just dropped off the face of the earth as the cutting edge (read by clients as "expensive") design disappeared. Work in general pretty much dried up, and our firm would probably not have been able to make it had it not been for the fact that have 60 years of experience with a core group of large, well-funded clients. The municipalities and universities that gave us the civic and educational work that I initially was reluctant to accept was just about the only kind of work left, which was a lesson in itself.

But I'm ready to move on. In order to find the right kind of job, and to continue my education as an architect, I need to see what else is out there. I want to spend some time working for the huge corporate firms, where there is a constant revolving door of architects and designers who are basically used like plug-in commodities (or so I hear). Ditto for the small firms, where you work for a single architect/owner who is never in because she's out finding work and you have to do all the work (also, so I hear).

I think I'm kind of rambling here, so I'll conclude.

Basically, it was a fantastic job where I learned a lot, and now I'm ready to move on.
But I will miss the easy life, the money, and the sleep. Definitely the sleep.