The Once and Future Architect

by Tony Chavira

The longer we are forced to fight through this economy, the longer unemployed recently-graduated architecture school alumni will go between jobs. Their once fine-honed drafting or modeling skills will erode as they desperately attempt, one futile resume/cover letter combination at a time, to get a job at the current median rate of $39,262. Yet before they are even able to take the first steps toward their career as a designer, they will see more starkly than most how unqualified they are for a position that requires little to no qualifications aside from architecture school itself.

Currently the national unemployment rate is 10.4%. The national unemployment rate for 20 to 24 year olds is 16.6%, and the rate for 25 to 35 year olds is 10.8%. This means that one in ten of your recently-graduated friends doesn’t have anything resembling a job or a consistent income. If you consider the generation called “Millennials” a demographic group, only 41% have full-time, nine-to-five jobs. The rest of us are consultants, part-timers, freelancers, per contract employees, or plain ol’ jobless. The cost of living in Los Angeles is 50% above the national average, which would essentially mean that the $38,292 young architects would potentially be getting paid the equivalent of $25,500 anywhere else in the nation simply because of how much more everything costs: living, transportation, food, general services, entertainment ... whatever. And the figures don’t look much better if you’re a licensed architect either:

Architectural projects, spurred both by the private sector and the federal stimulus, aren’t really anything to call home about either these days. The vast majority of the work is tenant improvement, which in many cases turns young, bright-eyed architects and designers into hardened, price-battle-scarred project managers. The amazing ideas they had to develop eco-farms on top of sky-rises are dashed when they join the worldwide design backbone that does the day-to-day work of improving facades, floor-planning cubicle spaces, redesigning HVAC systems, and picking new furniture for a lobby. There’s only so much cold, unexciting, analytical work anyone who was trained to be creative can do before the frustration overwhelms them and they need to break free.

But where do they go? As amazing as your rendering of a solar-paneled urban garden is probably going to be, how will you ever get the funding to build it when companies and investors are struggling just to find money to put up a few new coats of paint and change up their carpet? The kinds of projects that get green-lit these days are not large in scale or scope simply because budgets are not large in scale or scope. These projects are, appropriately, meant to strategically target the most necessary improvements based on need. Though this is usually a smart move (especially for examples like structurally-reinforcing stuff in California in preparation for the next big earthquake), it makes some strategies like installing a waterless plumbing system or a brand new batch of solar panels on the roof seem less visionary and more superfluous.

If there’s no room in the working, paying world for design vision, what do people with that vision do with themselves? Well, they can always submit to competitions in the hopes that they’ll get enough blog hype to propel their career forward one small paycheck at a time. But even winning a competition doesn’t guarantee anything will get built or a paycheck will come, so young designers simply cannot depend on a market that will hire them for full-time design services.

What most people don’t know about downsizing in large architectural firms is that it happens across the board. The inflated economy gives many the impression that gigantic, thousand-employee firms have architects and designers at all levels attacking the most pressing and innovate design issues of our time. Though this is true in that larger firms have the capacity to take on larger and more complicated projects, everyone in these companies knew during the boom that their firms were top-heavy with principals who no longer drew in work, senior designers with less and less to design, and project managers who sat on not-quite-approved projects. When the economy crashed, the careers of these employees—who, in some cases, had 30+ years of experience in the field—were over. Some feel that it is too late to start over, some feel trapped, but the Baby Boomer generation of architects, who grew up with visions of 1950s can-do modernism infused into their work and design ethic, believed that if they hustled and networked they could work back up fast. They’ve seen the economy crash and re-grow several times, and it has always affected the construction industry. To those with 30+ years of experience, it isn’t any different. They take jobs they need to take, do what they have to do to get by ... even if means small stuff like space-planning small tenant improvement jobs or adding a wing to a home. Their skills must pay the bills.

The Millennial generation of architectural designers is maturing in a much different zeitgeist, and with a much different background and upbringing. It’s easy to assume that many Millennials don’t work because they feel a sense of entitlement, but there is little chance for upward mobility in a field where you’re competing for jobs against 30+ year industry veterans. Millennials require too much training, and as more experienced generations become more desperate for work, it’ll seem like a no-brainer for companies to hire someone with 15 years of experience at the same rate as a Millennial with only 5 years. This will only reinforce and expand an existing difference between the Millennials’ attitude toward work versus generations previous: Millennials are more likely to value leisure time over work, and place a premium on rewards such as higher salaries and status within a company. Recently-graduated Millennial architectural designers, with their one to five years of work experience, feel deserving of an ample salary and distinguished title immediately, and this attitude will not jive with licensed architects who’ve worked through feast and famine in the construction and design field for 30+ years.

A lot of this problem could be negated if the Millennial Generation collectively understood that they need to drop their asking price and approach potential employers at a much lower salary and with a lessened title. But what is hard about this strategy (versus having tried it in the 50s, 60s or 70s) is that the overall cost of living continues to rise, and your future pay rate is fated by whatever your first pay rate is. If a young designer started at $20,000, she could not expect a salary of $38,000 the second year. But she could guarantee that she will have a job. Though this is the field of her training, the pay isn’t even as alluring as working for $15 an hour for Costco. At least Costco will pay and give you good benefits. Add to that any debt accumulated from five years of architecture school, and we’ve developed a creativity-killing cocktail of demotivation for those we hope to take the mantle and change the future of the construction industry.

Yas Hotel, Abu Dhabi, by Asymptote Architecture

And yet, when Millennial generation students were surveyed, 41% said that was “very important” to find a job that would allow them to be creative, in comparison to 36% of Baby Boomers and 38% of Generation X responders. When 44% of Millennial students think it’s “very important” to find a job that allows them to help others, we can probably assume that roughly that percentage of architecture students and recent graduates feel the same. If the kinds of jobs that help others and allow for creativity aren’t in the field of architecture, these young designers will probably go somewhere else: industrial design, 3D animation and rendering, property management and service ... who knows? As time goes by and being a licensed architect increasingly means being a glorified project manager, the helpful, creative young generation of design visionaries will become jaded before their time and the artistic drive to develop something amazing will dwindle and fade before it can fully blossom.

There was a long-held belief amongst architects before the 1960s that the field of architecture was for leisurely gentlemen. Partially true, but this doesn’t tell the whole story. The truth is that the field of architecture was subjected to an extreme form of attrition: the rich designer could afford to take on the jobs they wanted no matter the economic times, while the poor designer struggled along with whatever work he could get and eventually faded into obscurity. Longstanding firms with high-yield and high-profile projects would (and in many cases still are) named after men who funded their growth with dynastic wealth. These firms have history and clout because they can afford to have it. While the rest of the design community keeps its head low and works through recession times furiously, these supposed “starchitecture firms” can use their financial leverage to retain a large staff for long enough to grab another $100 million project when it becomes available. The design of their structures is, in many cases, inferior to what could be achieved with the budgets they work with ... but no one ever said having a 1,000-designer staff meant having an amazing building design.

Sadly, we may find ourselves in a situation that creates another economic and creative divide for this Millennial generation of architects and designers. Either the designer is able to magically place themself into one of the decreasing number of available jobs at a large firm, or they join the backbone of the design community and work for the rest of their lives on uncreative projects for long hours with constrained budgets that they will always be reminded of by their stressed out principal.

We must not let our current economic situation kill the creativity of an entire generation, and we must likewise help investors understand that all architects are artists at heart. They wouldn’t have joined the field if they didn’t want to design buildings ... all you have to do is give them the chance. The future of the industry, in a very literal way, depends on it.

Comments

No comments.

Comments closed.