To date, I have written over 500 posts “Life of an Architect” in the last 3.5 years and considering that I might spend an average of 4 hours on each post (writing, editing photos, sharing the posts, and responding to comments) how long they actually take to put together, that’s around 2,000 hours which last time I checked is almost equal to a full year’s worth of work.
As I sat here reflecting on what I’ve done on this website over these last few years, I thought it would be interesting to take everyone on a trip down memory lane and visit some of the articles I’ve written. Since that doesn’t sound very interesting, I thought I would focus on the articles that were pivotal and important to me in one way or another … these are, in many ways, Life of an Architect’s “Greatest Hits” but that doesn’t mean that they are the most popular.
I’m sure that other than me, nobody has read all of these posts, but even on the ones you might have seen before, I hope that my explanation on why they are important will shed new light on the content they contain.
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Top 10 Reasons to be an Architect
I had just started Life of an Architect when I wrote the ‘Top 10 Reasons to be an Architect’ article – barely a month. I was still trying to figure out insert pictures, use the system, insert links – all that behind the scenes crap that makes these sites actually function. At the time, I might have had 20 people a day come to the site and as soon as this post published my world literally changed overnight. The article was published in 4 different magazines and translated into more than 20 different languages. This article put me and Life of an Architect on the map.
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Top 10 Reasons to NOT be an Architect
The “Top 10 Reason NOT to be an Architect’ was the companion piece to the ‘Top Ten Reasons to be an Architect’, published the very next day … I can’t think of one without thinking of the other. The problem with this post was that for a long time, it was the more popular of the two and I had serious reservations about having my name associated with the negativity of this article. Although not specific to architects, I felt that I had betrayed my fellow architects.
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La Mort aux blocs de verre! (Death to glass blocks!)
Anybody who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that I have a strong dislike of glass blocks. This was the article that started it all. It includes this line that I am particularly found of:
“So why would someone want to use glass block? It is typically used for creating some sort of visual screen … like glaucoma”
That’s solid writing in my book.
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Guide to Residential Construction Costs
Most of the articles I write on this site are editorial in content – and for good reason. Stuff on the internet seems to live forever (or at least since the mid-90’s) and I didn’t ever want to go back and have to re-write some list or replace seriously outdated content. That and the fact that I don’t do a lot of research for the articles I write, I draw on practical experience and what I am currently doing as part of my work. This construction guide was one of the very first “real” articles I put together that had practical and relevant information for people. It must have worked out pretty well because this is also one of my most reference articles.
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Your Sketches Speak for Themselves
As you might have guessed (or maybe you know this first hand) I get a lot of emails from people at all stages of their lives about what it’s like to be an architect. One of the most frequently asked questions I receive was (is) “How can I be an architect, I can’t draw?” In an effort to respond to this fairly simple question in a more meaningful way, I wrote this article on sketching and the role it can play for an architect. Now I just send those folks a link to this post.
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My Secret Life as a “Hooker-Architect”
I don’t really know what to say about this one other than I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever written at the time. The reason I’ve included it here is that it’s the first time I started writing “dialogs” on the site. Basically this means either conversations I’ve had internally with myself or imagined with other people. I’m quite sure there is a real name for this sort of writing technique (barf … sorry, I know I don’t really have technique) but whatever you want to call it, this post has it in spades.
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An Interview with Kate Borson: Cultural Prodigy
This is a post that I will cherish forever. There are few things that are more awesome than talking architecture with a 6 year old. I don’t care who you are or if it’s your kid or not, this is the sort of thing that you want to last forever. It’s also important because I never really spent much time thinking about what it meant to include my kid in one of my articles … the attention this post receive caused me to rethink my non-existent policy. This was the last time Kate showed up on LIfe of an Architect in picture format.
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I don’t really do animal posts here on the site but this one was an exception. It’s called “Life of an Architect” for a reason and this was definitely a “LIfe” post. When you decide to write on a site like mine, there are some lines that you blur between writing content that is relevant to other people and maintaining an online diary. I try to stay away from the latter as much as possible but this is the one post that was an exception. This might also be the most emotionally charged article on my site.
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Design Studio: Top 10 Things You Should Know
There are things that I wish someone had told me when I was in architecture school. Even though I’m not sure I would have listened at the time, hearing some things might have resonated in such a way that might have changed how I went about my business at the time. Architecture students represent a significant portion of the readers I get on Life of an Architect and this article represents information that I think they should know about the time they spend in school.
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I used to think that architects had a superior education … We received the traditional stuff that everyone else had to contend with but the nature of our degree included math, science, art, just about everything. It is an incredibly well-rounded degree and I was extremely proud of having gone through the curriculum and received my degree until I met my wife. She has a Master’s Degree in Math and her education had all the same stuff I did and because most degrees are pretty light on math and science (unless they are a degree in either Math or Science) that if you pursue a degree in either of these areas you are going to end up with a very well-rounded education. Architects do not hold the patent on being creative, all you have you have to do is spend a little time talking with someone who has a degree in math, science – even music – to realize that creativity means more than what you might think it means.
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Most people think a designer means starting with a blank piece of paper and creating something from scratch. I am here to tell you that the truth is something far different. People who are designers view and impact the world around them in all sorts of manners. Even the act of detailing out a construction detail can empower someone to shape the final product in a significant way. Being a designer has more to do with how you think than the actual title you may carry.
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I hope people notice, but just in case you haven’t figured it out for yourself, I don’t work blue or negatively on this site. I try to watch my language and I rarely (if ever) call people out for doing something wrong. It would be incredibly easy (or at least far easier) to have a site that simply complained and moaned about work and projects that I thought had made the wrong decision. This post was one of two where I actually stepped outside my comfort zone and wrote that something was crap. I don’t really regret (despite the fact that one of the commentors said I was going to Hell) it but chances are you won’t see it again on this site. This particular project is terrible and I simply couldn’t resist wondering exactly what was someone thinking when they did this project … because it is remarkably terrible.
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Master Bath Shower, You Displease Me
As an architect who specializes in residential architecture, I am fairly particular about the way my house looks. Despite the fact that I didn’t design or build it myself, I think on some level it’s a reflection of my own particular skills. Talking about my own house and it’s design short-comings and how I want to fix things is a fairly common theme on Life of an Architect. ‘Master Bath Shower, You Displease Me‘ is one of the better examples and after I received about 10 emails from people who had made the sketch above their computer wallpaper, I figured this would be a good article to feature.
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Architect – The Best Job in the World
This was an easy post to include because it answer the question: Why do I like being an architect and think it’s the best job in the world? There are 5 succinct reasons why I like being an architect and since I get asked that question at least once a day, it was nice to finally spell it out for the people who ask.
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The “Not-So-Sexy” Side to Architecture
If I sat down with college aged architecture students, maybe even recently graduated architecture students, and told them what I do most days, they would think I have it pretty good. However, there is a not so sexy side to what I do and it takes up a majority of my time – I just don’t talk about it much because, well … it’s kind of boring. I got up on my dusty soapbox and decided to talk about what I do that makes things actually go.
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After I had been writing articles for Life of an Architect for about 5 months, I had made a few friends/ supporters from around the country. We all participated in a writing exercise where a topic was selected and we all wrote and published an article on that topic on the same day. It was a great writing exercise and really helped develop my writing creativity. This post – ‘Write My Own Obituary’ was one of the hardest topics and also one of the most rewarding. 208 word count, no rewrites or edits allowed, 15 minute time limit from start to finish.
It’s a lot harder than it sounds.
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Architect + Architect = Architect
FInally I thought I would include an article that isn’t really an article at all. I have to edit a lot of photographs and supporting graphics for the articles I write and preparing these images normally takes about 3x as long as writing the actual article. As a result, there are loads of articles that I think would be terrific to put together but they would take too much time. This post, ‘Architect + Architect = Architect‘ was one of those ideas that I finally sat down and did the graphic work. The end result was terrific (I think) both visually AND I thought it was pretty funny … I was pretty pleased with myself.
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So there you have it, 17 articles that I am surprised to admit not only changed how I thought about things, modified my behavior in a lasting manner. It’s funny to think that this silly and ridiculous website would turn out to be the thing that has shaped my professional life as significantly as it has. I am very grateful and consider myself fortunate to have such an amazing wife that supports the time I spend on this “hobby” and that the people who swing by the site always seem to be such positive and engaging individuals. Cheers to you all –
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