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613: Why Architecture School Is Failing Its Students with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard | Otter.ai

613: Why Architecture School Is Failing Its Students with Enoch Sears & Rion Willard

Enoch Sears50min

Rion Willard

00:00

There is so much possibility for people who have studied architecture. Hello architect

Enoch Sears

00:06

nation, and welcome back. Today is going to be a shorter podcast episode. We're going to dive into an article that we stumbled across on Reddit where we like to lurk and browse at times. My name is Enoch Sears, and I'm joined today here by Mr. Ryan. Willard Ryan, hello.

Speaker 1

00:19

Thank you very much. Enoch, pleasure to be here as always. Now, those of you who are

Enoch Sears

00:24

not familiar with Business of Architecture, Business of Architecture is a consultancy for architectural practices. Consists of experts in business, particularly as a regards to architectural practices, and we help firm owners implement what is, what is known as the smart practice method. And you can find more out about that by going to smart practice method.com Do not go there if you enjoy overwhelm, if you enjoy stress, long hours and low pay, because that's the antidote to that. And now a word from today's sponsor. A while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company world teams, that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs. World teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration. And world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team for a small architectural practice, go to Business of architecture.com, forward slash world teams, that's one word, Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. As a reminder, sponsorship is not an endorsement, and you must do your own due diligence before entering into any business relationship. Go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. We

Rion Willard

02:39

are looking for architect developer stories for the Business of Architecture podcast. So are you an architect developer, with valuable insights to share? We're always on the lookout for passionate voices in the industry to join us on the Business of Architecture podcast. If you're ready to share your journey, lessons, strategies with our global audience, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us to explore being a guest on our show and help inspire other architect developers on their path. We'd be interested in hearing your story, whether you're at the very beginning of your development story, or whether you have $100 million portfolio of projects already in the bag completed. We'd like to hear from you if you're working with the developers, or that you've developed a number of small houses, or you're working at a larger scale. So

Enoch Sears

03:29

the article that we found here on Reddit, and there's I love Reddit because there's just people are just, they're very, seems like they're very authentic on Reddit. And the cool that I like the up voting and down voting, it seems to keep trolls out more than some other social platforms. So the question here that someone had posted in the architecture subreddit was, why are so many architects so cynical about their job? And the person I'm going to write read a little bit out of this particular post here, this question that was asked in Reddit, I'm currently setting architecture, and I love it. I get the dry parts of architecture, all the rather boring, red tape codes, specifications, monotonous detailing, shitty work hours, long education and low pay. But why so cynical? And then there was a lot of comments down here. And interestingly, it seems like some of the top answers said something along the lines of one of the things I think is unique is that the general public has a perception of the job of architect as an elite artistic yet technical, high paying and glamorous kind of career, and attaches a certain amount of trustees to it, which I would say that sounds accurate. Yep, very true in you know. And he says, This person says, Think of how architects are portrayed in films or books, for example, certainly the architect is definitely, we're still enshrined and glorified in the in the entertainment media, I would say for the most part, there's some cynical stuff there too. Who that is.

Rion Willard

05:00

That's funny. You say that, you know, I the I miss the reaction I used to get when I introduced myself as an architect. I mean, I still am an architect, but I'll often introduce myself as a business consultant these days, and there's way more suspicion when you tell people what you do, or you tell people about the sometimes you tell about the people about the podcast, and that's quite interesting. But when I used to introduce myself as an architect, people be like, Oh, wow, so interesting, amazing. They've always a kind of good point excitement around it. And there's a prestige that's associated with it for sure, true

Enoch Sears

05:37

when I tell people I run an education and training company, and no one ever says, Oh, wow, that's amazing. That's a good point. I do remember, if you say you're an architect, people are and, I mean, nine times out of 10 they're going to say, Oh, I wanted to be an architect myself, or oh, I took some drafting in college. And oh,

Rion Willard

05:54

yeah, sounds there's a romance to it, for sure. It's a glamor.

Enoch Sears

05:59

There's a glamor. Okay, so, so it could be that that's why, maybe one reason why we get so cynical is a lot of times we go into it with different expectations of what we thought architect would actually be like, I know I can say that was, that was the case for me. I mean, you know, for me, it was interesting when I, when I went to Cornell University, I felt like I was the least indoctrinated of my fellow, colleagues and students, right? Like when I the reason why I decided, why I decided to become an architect, was because I I'd always loved art, I loved drawing, and I had a talent for it, and I wanted to do something where I could actually monetize my talent. I wanted to actually make a decent income. I didn't want to be a starving artist, so to speak. So I thought, well, architecture seems to blend both of those. It's a profession, so you're going to get a decent pay. And, you know, have to live with with my parents until I'm 40, and at the same time, I can do architecture, which is, you know, it's very artistic and and, you know, it's being able to be creative. And so that's why I ended up in school. But when i What was interesting, when I got to school, I found out that I would say there was maybe 10 to 20, probably around 20% I would say, of my fellow students there, like they were already kind of died on the wool architects, they like, brought the architecture ethos they knew of some of the, you know, unheard of architects that I didn't I mean, when I went to school, I knew of, like, two architects, or maybe three, you know, Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch. I am paid just because I stumbled across one of his monographs in a local bookstore. And of course, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, I never heard of Lake Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe Avar alto, you know, some of these, some of these other very influential within the architectural niche, architects. But when I went to school, I was interesting to find out that some of my, some of my fellow students there, they did. They were talking about all these architects that they knew that were kind of more obscure in everyday parlance, and that was surprising to me, but I know that I was sort of still in the idea that architects was this glamorous kind of profession, and school definitely fortified that. So that may go into this question as well, which is in school. Let's face it, universities are marketing institutions. They're there to market their services and what they provide, which is a degree,

Rion Willard

08:28

yeah, we often don't talk about the fact that academics don't like to talk about the fact that they're working for institutions that are ultimately businesses, and that there is a kind of a business agenda. Also, this is bad. It's just that it's not there's a consequence to not acknowledging it and denying about it, and I would certainly my again, I'm talking my own personal experience probably echoes a bit of yours. I loved my architectural education in general, and enjoyed finding out about all those kind of random architects that nobody had ever heard of and and I enjoyed the kind of encouragement to go off into a really random, weird niche of of thinking about something or something very esoteric and all that kind of kind of stuff. But I had a very kind of short, sharp kick to the teeth upon entry into the world of the professional world of architecture, because what I had led to believe it was about in through university was so far away from what it actually was about. Yeah.

Enoch Sears

09:34

I mean, you went to the Bartlett school, right? Yeah. And they taught you that architecture was about reflected seething plans and waterproofing details Absolutely, and when you got out, you discovered that was actually about envisioning beautiful landscapes, watercolor, yeah, and I'm really questioning renderings and questioning what it means to be an architect and to exactly and to be like a kind of. An, you know, an avant garde philosopher of some, you have a great story about one of your first jobs with the whole airport story. Tell us that,

Rion Willard

10:07

oh, my first job was working at Grimshaw architects in in London. And you should have known what the name like Grimshaw. I mean, you should have been forewarned. I mean, no offense. Well, they were quite wonderful people at Grimshaw. They were, they were quite, despite the name, it was quite. It was quite a well known practice who'd who'd done lots of lovely high tech work in the in the UK, like the Eden Project and stuff. So they had a bit of prestige about them. And I graduated in 2008

Enoch Sears

10:35

so I know a bad joke. We're probably going to get some hate mail from Grimshaw partners now. I know you guys do excellent work. We're just joking lighting up. No,

Rion Willard

10:42

I mean, it's not the first time I've had, I've had that comment even, even to myself just saying the word grim. Show you like it sounds it's a stale joke. Literally, it sounds grim.

Enoch Sears

10:52

It's like, it's like, when people, when they hear my name Enoch Sears, I get all the jokes about Kmart or Sears or department stores. I get it. It's tired and born. Okay, so you ended up at Grimshaw partners, which is a very prestigious firm, prestigious firm.

Rion Willard

11:06

They do lots of amazing work, and they're very good at what they do, and they they're kind of probably some of the best architects for transport architecture in the world. And I have a lot more appreciation for them as a business now. But my my experience there was, you know, I ended up working. It was the kind of beginning of the recession, and the work was very, very dry. It's the best way to put it, what

Enoch Sears

11:35

were you doing? Specifically help us understand i

Rion Willard

11:38

One of my jobs was, I worked on the refurbishment of the South terminal at Gatwick. So Gatwick Airport, and the Gatwick Airport is a very ugly looking terminal building, and my job was to, I was in charge of, I wasn't in charge of anything. I was just drawing. I was part of a team drawing in the reflected scene. In charge of putting some lines on the paper. Ryan, let's be realistic. I was, I just had to move the lines around when instructed, and perhaps change change title. And I remember, what did you expect? And it was, it was like six months of just drawing a grid, and then you'd then you'd spend time, and you'd spend like you'd had to go and look at, you know, specifications of ceiling panels and aluminum polyester powder coated ball nosed ringed ceiling panels. And they were just, just sheets of metal. And you know that, yeah, for eight hours a day, for for months, for months and months and months. I remember complaining about it to my to my dad, and he was like, Oh, you don't know anything about boring jobs. I once had to I once had a job counting the perforations on steps

Enoch Sears

12:59

they do that you get paid for that he had some random sounds, like some sort of tortured Buddhist meditation or something. He had some job

Rion Willard

13:06

where he was working for, like, a an auction house, and they were and they were looking at rare stamps. And so his job, he was only young, young, but he had to count the numbers on and make sure that they had, like, an even amount of numbers otherwise.

Enoch Sears

13:19

Anyway, so he went into accounting. I mean, yes, obviously

Rion Willard

13:22

it was the, it was the forerunner for that. But I was like, I was like, actually, no, this, that's that sounds in alignment, actually, with levels of boredom, of of of what I've been doing. And then everyone's kind, and everyone has the, there's obviously the attitude of, oh, well, you got to suck it up. He you gotta, you gotta cut your teeth. And I think the frustration there as well, certainly from my ex, you know, my entitled perspective was, I've just spent eight years at university learning all this stuff, and now none of it is appropriate or applicable or has anything to do of anything. And I could have learned to do these skills that I'm learning in business, in the actual kind of craft of architecture, a, I don't know them. And B, I could have learned, you know, I could have learned this 10 years ago, and now we could be doing something interesting. So there's, there was that kind of frustration, of, you've got to be joking me. And then, and then, then you kind of the reality sets in of the long hours and the level of pay that you get. And then you can kind of see your other friends who didn't work as hard for university. They only spent a few hours, and now they've got jobs in the city, working in finance, getting paid 120 grand, and you're like, wow,

Enoch Sears

14:42

they're paying for your dinner. And you're when you guys go out and you're grateful for it, thanks for picking up the tab.

Speaker 1

14:50

Oh, ouch. Yeah, that's the ice. There's the architect blues. Yeah,

Enoch Sears

14:56

it's, I mean, it's part of it, right? I mean, anyway. And stuck in something that long is going to feel they're going to fill tax, especially if you went into it thinking that and expecting that it's going to be a very creative endeavor, yeah, artistic problem solving

Rion Willard

15:11

I do when I look back on my own education. I mean, again, I really enjoyed my time at the at the Bartlett, but I look back on it now, perhaps with a sense of it being kind of intellectually very indulgent. That said, there's lots of ideas that I kind of incubated there that I now get to express and practice in a very, very different way here with what we do at Business of Architecture. So there's a I'm very grateful that for everything, all the experiences have led up to this experience that I have now. So it's all you landed. It worked out, it worked out. It all worked out. So it's not even the end yet, exactly we've just been which we've just begun. So

Enoch Sears

15:53

here's one of the comments from this, this Reddit thread here, it says the fact that we have responsibility for so many aspects of a building while having lower paid than our other disciplines. I do remember this. I remember, you know, when I was working on a large hospital project. I remember going to the the meetings on the job site and meeting my peers who were in other disciplines. So, for instance, the they, I guess they call them project engineers, that's what they call in the construction side. That's what they, a lot of times, call the people who are at my same kind of level on the job site. It's kind of, they're not superintendents, but they're kind of just underneath the superintendent called project engineers. And I remember going home and I was like, I wonder what he makes. So I do a little quick search about what project engineers and it's like 30% more than what I'm making men and less schooling and a lot less experience. I'm like, damn it. So this, this comment here, continues, we're constantly expected to produce more, better, faster, for free, because architecture is at times, a race to the bottom, if you're not careful. I'm pretty happy in general, but I get the cynicism it can wear on you. I think that's, you know, whoever made that comment there. That's a sounds like a pretty good summary of the way that we feel in architecture, a lot.

Rion Willard

17:09

Yeah, there's no, there's no shortage of, uh, disgruntled architects. Certainly, you know, if you're working in your own practice and it's a struggle with your fees. I mean, I think the economic side of it really does. You know if you're not, if you're not doing anything to empower yourself around that part of it, or you feel like it's hopeless, there's nothing I can do about it. That's very exhausting, crushing. That's very, very exhausting. And yeah, we can be our own worst enemy with this in the architecture industry, because we can just, you know, be in complaint about it, as opposed to try and change something. And even for, you know, individual architects, and I like the stories of people leaving the architecture profession. Now, there's an argument to be said that there's an oversaturation of architects. And, you know, there's a lot of 1000s and 1000s of students as a as a degree, as an education. There's loads of people. Again, we go back to our earlier point of the the education side of it is, is a successful business, and they've marketed it well, and it looks really appealing, and it's this kind of creative they know how to market, but they're just not teaching us how to do it. It's the it's the creative, free expressed, you know, profession that has high status.

Enoch Sears

18:42

Ryan, you would be amazed. So my son recently crushed his SAT exams, which is one of the examinations to get Yes, yeah, to get into. He obviously got his brains from his mother, not his father, that you used to get into to there's two basic exams that are taken in the US. One's the SAT, the ones, the A, C, T, generally, it's the SAT. And you know, all the top Ivy League schools, you're all going to have a minimum SAT score to get into those kind of schools. You know you're looking at. A lot of people have at least a 1200 1300 or above, right? And so he's policed very, very highly on the SAT, like top one percentile. So he's guiding. He's getting Ivy League schools writing him. But going back to this marketing as as a as a business matter, someone who gets the idea of marketing business, I'm just amazed at how these universities are marketing to my son, like not a day goes by that doesn't get some postcard from some school touting how it's like the perfect place, and here's what we represent, here's our ethos. And some are better than others, but it's very interesting to see that there a lot of schools are pulling out all the stops. They have a marketing budget. Obviously, they're reaching out. They know their avatar. They want students that have scored a certain percentage on their SATs, which is why he's on this list that the College Board sells. You know. It's all a business. It all goes back at one way, shape or form. Money's involved, because money is, what is the equilibrium of exchange?

Rion Willard

20:09

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you look at the universities in the architectural world, each university has its own kind of brand. If I look at the Bartlett where I trained, for example, that had its that had its own brand, and it had its own brand of the kind of students that it wanted to celebrate, and the work that it kind of publicizes, and it's exciting and sexy looking out of this world avant garde thinking, and then it kind of gets all the the research credits from the university, or however, you know, and wins the award becomes this very this place that's marketed as being an intellectual hot house for it sounds like

Enoch Sears

20:51

a meme, like one of these internet memes, where it's like, here's what an architect from the Bartlett looks like. Here's an architect from, you know, USC. Here's an architect from Berkeley, here's an architect from Harvard, here's an architect from Notre Dame. The ones from Notre Dame, we know they would definitely have the cardigan and the bow tie. All you, all you Notre Dame fans, like, they're, they're the one of the schools that still teaches classicism in the US. Like, if you want to learn classicism, classical architecture, you go to Notre Dame, like you go there, they have, hands down. That's the school. I think Yale maybe has a little bit of that, although they've gone a lot more avant Garn modern. You know, we all know, we all know people at well, what would people at Harvard be dressed like based upon the ethos there, you know, the GSD,

Rion Willard

21:37

I'd imagine that they were all in their kind of, in their shirts with the buttons up to the top collar, wearing

Enoch Sears

21:44

that would definitely be the Harvard look. You know, you'd expect to see that the cardigan, like a Letterman's jacket or something, exactly because not at the architect school, though, like, um, who, who? What would be the school where people would be like, literally, have, like, neck tattoos and, you know, they're like, maybe even wearing some eyeliner, something, you know, they're like, kind of like, very those would be,

Rion Willard

22:04

who would that be in? In London, that would probably be like, Westminster or something, okay, some of the more edgy Uber union in New York City, yeah, they're kind of more Sierra in Southern California. They're kind of more edgy avant garde schools. There you go, pushing boundaries. If

Enoch Sears

22:22

anyone wants to set in any any memes around this. If you want to create a meme, we will share it and post it on our networks. I think that could be a pretty funny thing is to like, kind of categorize the schools, Auburn University. Auburn is the home of Rural Studio. Say I would walk beat where they would, they would go out and build stuff in rural areas, I'd

Rion Willard

22:44

imagine the morning, like gun boots

Enoch Sears

22:47

and gun boots, Oh, you mean gum boots. You mean the rubbers, the rubber boots, yeah, yeah, no, yeah, no, that makes sense. They probably are, you know, yeah. They have some, some khaki pants that kind of bag in a little sagging, a little bit

Rion Willard

23:00

exactly, cargo pants with loads of, you know, pockets to put tools in and stuff

Enoch Sears

23:04

a flannel shirt, a flannel shirt. There you go. Although, in down south, that would be quite brutal. Too hot. Too hot. Yep, too hot. Let's see, um, ITT Chicago.

Rion Willard

23:20

I wouldn't know I'm thinking, I'm thinking black turtlenecks.

Enoch Sears

23:25

So that's, that's a go to, well and see that's, that's, that's, this is okay. This goes back to our conversation of expectations of architecture versus what architecture is really like. I think one of the challenges that maybe leads to the cynicism is how difficult it is to actually understand. Number one, what an architect does, number from the outside. Number two, what schools represent and how schools are different, the different ethos that schools have, the philosophies, the ways of teaching, the ways of thinking, because they vary. They can vary greatly from school to school, and the different paths within architecture. Because, look, let's face it, if you look at your path and career as an architect, like what I understood is my idea of an architect, the architecture designs all the time. Ryan and does the really fun drawings and sketching and presentations, and they're doing Charettes, and they're every Thursday, they get together as a design studio, and they're pinning things up on the board and going back and forth like we did in studio. Like those people do exist that do that full time, but they're at the larger firms, and they are in on the design team. Okay, in a small firm, if you work for a small firm, you might get that opportunity maybe 10% of the time. If you've been there for a while, actually get your hands in design. Other than that, you're looking at drawing details. You're looking at fleshing out a design that someone else did. You're looking at, you know, maybe coordinating Product Management. You're looking at, maybe you want to go the owner, kind of the contract administration route where you're on site. Maybe, if you're one of the few select souls, you might go into. Specifications. Yeah, yeah. To guys like you and I, that sounds like torture, but believe it or not, there are people out there that just that stuff up. I

Rion Willard

25:09

guess the other, the other interesting thing here is, again, I kind of relate from my own personal experiences. We've all got to find our way in the architectural world. It's a big it's a big profession, it's a big pool, it's a big ocean. There's lots of different directions you can do and the skills in general that you learn from an architectural degree, they are transferable, and they can be well rewarded in different disciplines and different fields. And I know that there's a kind of a strong from an academics point of view. And if I would criticize academia, that are often the retort from academics as well. We're not teaching. We're not creating students for for for fodder in the in the profession. We're creating students to be thinkers and to be thinking for themselves. And that's fine, Fair enough, fair enough. That's great. And I, again, personally, I appreciate that. That's, you know, I had the opportunity to indulge in that, but it's not also, it's not why I was sold

Enoch Sears

26:10

well. And also, are they, are they exclusive,

Unknown Speaker

26:13

exclusionary?

Enoch Sears

26:13

No, they're not right. In other words, like, just because we're taught to problem solve, does that mean that we're not taught about the importance of finance and how these two things intermesh and go together. It shouldn't be like was it on this episode of the other ones where you talked about developers being having great creative solutions. It was the last one we just did. Yeah, we just record another episode. But yeah, you brought up developers as an example of affiliated profession where they're being very creative, not in the way that architects are creative, but they're being very creative. Very creative in the way they put together deals, the way they look for financing, the way they piece together different federal incentive programs to be able to provide funding for projects. I

Rion Willard

26:54

remember, I remember having a chat with my my my dad years ago, and you and you and your dad talk. We tweet or call us. We talk a lot. Used to

Enoch Sears

27:06

man, wow,

Rion Willard

27:09

and he, he was telling me about creativity doesn't just exist in the arts, and it's a very kind of restricted viewpoint to think that creativity is just in the domain of art and music and then in the humanities, and it can exist outside of, exist out of that land. For you, like, how did you remember how that conversation came at the time? I was like, whatever? Did he just sit you down

Enoch Sears

27:35

over breakfast? When I say, Ryan, I have something this is going to change your world. I think

Rion Willard

27:39

we were in the in the car, and I was probably complaining about something not being creative enough,

Enoch Sears

27:48

or, well, it's interesting. It's so interesting the way certain memories stick with us. Like, that's a very specific story, but it really stuck with you, yeah? Like, what he imparted to you,

Rion Willard

28:02

yeah? Because at the time, I rejected it.

Enoch Sears

28:06

I thought you might, that's how I thought you were going with that time,

Rion Willard

28:09

I rejected it, and I was very resolute with no creativity exists in these certain pursuits. And now I look back on on this, and you know, like the conversation we were having earlier. I'm like, Wow. I really was, I was really very close minded as a young person, that I was so resolute that creativity only exists in this very small domain.

Enoch Sears

28:34

Yeah, I remember the first time I had that. I remember the first time I had that revelation, Ryan, it was when I started dabbling in creating websites. So as I started to dabble in creating websites, I was like, Wow. You know, this is actually just as fulfilling as architecture, and the turnaround time is one to two months as opposed to one to two years,

Speaker 1

28:55

yes, and I was gonna suit up to personality for sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So

Enoch Sears

29:01

I was like, wow, that's That's fascinating. And then I begin to like, you said, like your example, developers, I just begin to see everywhere how there's creativity in a lot of these other professions. So as we circle back here, Ryan, it seems like we're landing on and my the whole reason why I brought up school, and my experience at school, and how school, the ethos is different, and the paths and architecture are different, is because it's really hard to make an informed decision when you go into architecture, like I chose to go to Cornell because it was literally one of the top 10 schools that I saw in this us and News World Report that like ranks schools, I'm like, Well, you know, I've always thought that You always want to go to the best. So I want to do the undergraduate program. And at the time that was, it was the number one ranked five year program in the US. I'm like, that's up my sites there. If I get accepted, I'm going to go there. That was my criteria for getting into Cornell. When I discovered, when I went there, I discovered there's an entire ethos with the way that architecture is taught at. Cornell University that is very different from the way that it's taught at Auburn or Berkeley or site arc similars. There's some similarities, but certainly different than the way it's taught someplace like Cal Poly, which is an excellent program, one of the top programs in the US. But they take not only do they bring in the artistic side, but they definitely have a more pragmatic approach to it, very different, different from the way it would be taught at some place, like, like Notre Dame that we mentioned earlier. You know, where it's gonna it's gonna take a very classical approach, like we, we would not learn anything like that at Cornell. As a matter of fact, one of my projects had I, for some reason, I think it was like at sophomore year. I put arches in one of my projects, Ryan,

Unknown Speaker

30:43

they're gonna beat that one out of you, right?

Enoch Sears

30:46

I mean, I got literally grilled for 15 minutes. I just, I was, I was so curious why they're focusing on this one aspect of my project.

Rion Willard

30:55

But again, it's really interesting. Now I reflect back on the kind of ethos or philosophy of the university that you kind of don't it kind of blinds you a little bit to the whole to the rest of the rest of the world, or the rest of the architectural profession, like at the Bartlett, we were very avant garde and very modernist, if you like. And now I find these days, I have much more interest in in classicism and traditional architecture and vernacular forms of architecture and churches and cathedrals and things like that, and that, that kind of interest was not, you know, you couldn't go into A crit and design something with arches, or in a classical tradition, it just

Enoch Sears

31:45

would be, they would just, I mean, that's like going, that's, that's like going into, I like, if I would have put like a Doric, or, it wasn't that bad, but I would put like a dork or Corinthian column of one of my projects, they would have run me out. They probably would have revoked my, uh, would you remember my acceptance

Rion Willard

32:02

if you were to go back? Now, this is a difficult question. It's a fun one. I'd like you. I like thought experiments. Would you? Would you study architecture again? Ooh,

Enoch Sears

32:15

oh, oh, that's a good one. That's a good one, right? Well, these, these, that's a very good question. Good question.

Rion Willard

32:25

It's a difficult one to answer, because I know both of us are very happy with where we are now, and if we hadn't studied architecture, then we wouldn't be where we are now. Yeah, yeah. And so there's, there's, there's that

Enoch Sears

32:39

you threw you've made me I'm speechless, Ryan, maybe

Rion Willard

32:42

I'll, maybe I'll, yeah, why don't you? Please you first share some thoughts on that. I think I didn't know anything else at the time, and there was like logical reasons. Oh, you're good at maths and science, and there's the whole prestige of being an architect, the whole the whole marketing brand of architect, that's all very appealing, and it seems to tick a lot of boxes, and parents are happy, and it appears to be creative, and all of that kind of stuff. And, you know, I wasn't aware. I was just ignorant to anything else, basically, whereas now it's a much more kind of broader, informed perspective that I have. But if I knew what I knew now, then I wouldn't study architecture again. And certainly if I was studying, if I was going to school now in 2025 2024 I'd probably choose. I'd go down different path. You know, here's what I would do, okay, to university, honest. I

Enoch Sears

33:46

appreciate your perspective, so you kind of made a light bulb go off. What I would do is I would, I would get into a top school in an area that's a fluent like maybe try to get into an Ivy League school, but I'd want to go to a school that was close by where I wanted to settle down, so it might be in California somewhere. And I would focus on, not so much what I was learning, but I would focus on making connections with the right people. That's interesting. Yeah, that's what I would do. I would focus on making connections with the right people and impressing the right people, in other words, getting good grades so that like the right professors would take notice of me or whatever, but really cultivating relationships, which is one thing I did not do at Cornell. I thought it was all about the education. I haven't kept in touch with any of my professors. I didn't get to know any of them beyond being my professor, which is a total shame, I didn't become very close to any of my classmates or colleagues in architecture at Cornell, which is fine, because I didn't really end up in the industry if. And one thing I didn't know Ryan about, what's so important about college where you go, is that a lot of the architects who go to Cornell stay out in the east, and so it's very advantageous, because you're going to get job offer. From people. Oh, yeah, I know Enoch. He went to, he was in my class, yeah, let's so there's a lot of that happening where they're like, right? You know, jumping from job to job and firm to firm, because of the network that was created on the east coast. So out here, when I moved to California, I mean, there's the very few architects that went through Cornell architecture school of art, art and planning out here in California. So good question. Looking back, I think that for me, it's not so important what I study. I might have actually gone into a different field of study that I would I really loved architecture. That's the thing architecture, I felt was very it was very broad. There was a dose of history in there. It's

Rion Willard

35:38

very nurturing science. It's a very rich subject, very

Enoch Sears

35:41

rich. And it's very much about the arts, which I really enjoyed,

Rion Willard

35:44

yeah, and there's, there's lots of different ways that you can pursue your own interest within it, certainly a kind of, you know, intellectual University, if you like. Yeah, for sure, yeah. Well, I think it's interesting as well. You say about building the network, and that's something I'd certainly give. Give advice to my younger self, is the skill sets that I thought were frivolous, like socializing and making relationships, but I also kind of had a guilt about pretty because of the way I was using that skill,

Enoch Sears

36:19

but it never using that skill Ryan, just muck around and drug sex and rock and roll in that order, hedonistic,

Rion Willard

36:27

having having fun with other people. Lifestyle, yeah, but, but actually, I, I nobody ever, and it wasn't until I was working with a business consultant, we actually kind of sat down and just had a look at what, what are your natural skills? What are you good at, as opposed to, like, your academic skills? Well, I'm good at art, I'm good at I'm good at science. Well, really, are you, is this? This is just, you're just getting, you know, you're getting decent grades, and they're all kind of arbitrary and at a certain level. But does that really express what you're great at? And so these kind of other skills, certainly communication, talking, presenting, there are that's a rich skill set to explore and to kind of start investigating that at an earlier age would have been interesting.

Enoch Sears

37:26

Yeah, so the point, but, you know, and actually, something else, can I? Can I change my answer? Ryan,

Rion Willard

37:31

yeah, there isn't this is the thing. My answer will change to this. Okay, thank goodness. Um,

Enoch Sears

37:38

I would, I would. I would, I would avoid school altogether, and I would buy as much Bitcoin as I could possibly buy. You imagine, back in I went to school in 1996 I don't even know if bitcoin was around back then. When was Bitcoin invented?

Speaker 1

37:58

2001 2002 1994 Okay, so

Enoch Sears

38:05

2008 Wow, was it? Yeah, 2008 I find it so interesting that Bitcoin was that this is so crazy, like, when you think about Bitcoin, they do not know. Well, we don't really know who invented Bitcoin. Isn't that crazy? It was Satoshi Nakamoto, who's an anonymous it's a pseudonym. We don't even know who. Well, Ryan. We've discussed a lot today. We started out, why are architects so with this cool thread we found on Reddit, why are architects so cynical about the profession? We've talked about academia. We've talked about cryptocurrency, universities, marketing, sales, I guess, place expectations,

Rion Willard

38:45

one, one message, I suppose, a positive message that we should end on is, yeah, let's end on a positive note. Um, is that there is so much possibility for people who have studied architecture. There are so many transferable skills. There's so many different ways, certainly when you infuse architecture with other skills like business, of course, which we're advocates for, that the potential for what we can do with architectural education is enormous.

Enoch Sears

39:20

And a quick nod to you, bring up some of our friends over at out of architecture.com

Unknown Speaker

39:26

Absolutely. Yeah. So

Enoch Sears

39:29

we could check them out, because they specifically focus on talking about producing a lot of content about, you know how maybe, if you're not really happy in architecture, how you might be able to transfer those skill sets over into other affiliated fields. If they've

Rion Willard

39:44

been around in 2008 I would have, I would have hooked them up and Yeah, been all over that,

Enoch Sears

39:51

yeah, followed them. Aaron and Jake over there, out of architecture, yeah, all right, Ryan, that's a great. That is a pause. Of note. Yeah, I think that's a great place to end on the idea that you know, when I look back at my architectural career, the instruction was rigorous, and as much as we talk about how it may not have directly helped me with some of the technical aspects of architecture, it certainly helped develop my problem solving, not only ability, but also confidence in myself that you know, these challenges are here to

Rion Willard

40:25

be solved. So that's the that's the other thing to dismiss, is that architecture schools are robust competitive environments, and I'm very grateful for that. Actually, I'm very grateful for the competitive nature that was at the Bartlett, and I was around people who were brilliant, like really, like, insanely talented kids. And you'd walk in and you were just like, Oh my God, how the hell have they done that? And it brought about a very, you know, a kind of a certain ambition as well. And it also you had to, at some point, kind of not take yourself so seriously with your work. And there were some kind of epic fails and emotions and, you know, conversations that could land in a very harsh way, if you if you weren't responsible for how you were interpreting it. And, and I, and I'm very grateful for that environment, because remember, in my degree being feeling very down about what I was doing and my work and all this kind of stuff, and, and it was one of the things that got me interested in, you know, reading about Buddhism and picking up a Tony Robbins book. And, you know, just I was, I wanted to learn, how do I, how do I deal with the mental side of this? And, yeah, yeah, and the tough in the tough environment, you know it's, it's great for that like, and I know it can take its casualties. But here's an interesting

Enoch Sears

42:05

here's an interesting call up. Maybe it's for them, those of you involved in academia who listen to this podcast, which are probably a very, might, a very small minority, perhaps three of you, three of you, the three of three people out there who are involved in academia and actually listen to this podcast, or if you have any influence in academia, it would I would be curious to know if any universities have thought about having another course of study within their architecture program that is more focused on design thinking, sort of agnostic design thinking, as opposed to strictly Architecture. Because when I look at my education at Cornell, Cornell was, I would say it was 85% design thinking, maybe 15% architecture, meaning a lot of the things that we were studying, even though they were in the context of architecture, they were really based around design thinking. And so really it was a design thinking degree in architecture is what I feel like I received over

Rion Willard

43:05

Yeah, and I'd echo that, and I know that the Bartlett, for example, I remember Peter Cook, who was the Dean at the school for many years. Him saying at one point they were considering divorcing themselves from the roba pathway to becoming an architect. Because every year the RBA would kind of, you know, you've got to have this box and this box and this box ticked, and they had considered just making an architectural thinking course, or some kind of architectural design thinking. So it wasn't, it kind of broke away. So I'm sure there are lots of academics who are kind of,

Enoch Sears

43:44

and there's a lot, because the rigor of an architectural program would be invaluable for an innovative startup company. Absolutely, you know, any company in any other area of field, I just did a quick search online that looks like Duke University, just the rigor of

Rion Willard

44:01

like learning to iterate on on an idea, you know, having to go through something again and again and again till you get something emergent that comes out. That's such a good sort of discipline to learn and again as well. The kind of robustness of the architectural environment is, you know, it's not. It's not like what real life is like, particularly in business, yeah?

Enoch Sears

44:26

So it would be. It would be an interesting solution to give students in architecture the opportunity to maybe stay in the program, but actually focus their career goals and kind of open them up to the possibility of using their design skills in non architecture related ways that would be interesting. I wonder if there's any schools doing that right now, any architecture school. So if you know of anything like that, we'd be interested to hear about it. It looks like Stanford has a creativity and design thinking program, online and online program.

Rion Willard

44:59

I don't think about. Bartlett does the Bartlett has all sorts of do they interesting degrees now that are kind of aside to the architectural path

Enoch Sears

45:09

in different disciplines. Interesting, as always. If you have any feedback about this or any other episodes, please drop that over to us via email support at businessof architecture.com, or just visit our website, and you can click on Contact Us, and there's a handy dandy contact form that goes directly to the team here at Business of Architecture. And as always, if you haven't, if you're a firm owner or you have entrepreneurial drive inside of you and you don't want to play the hands that you were dealt. In other words, you have you're not willing to accept the status quo of the way that so many, so many times in architecture, we think that this is just the hand that we're dealt, and we got to deal with it. Then we invite you to head on over to smart practice method.com where you will get free access to a 60 minute master class, where I've distilled as much information as I can about the past 10 to 15 years, on the path that both Ryan and I have been on as we've been out there in the world, going where most architects never go, and bringing this information back and synthesizing it for you to help understand how to apply the latest design thinking to your practice. So That's smartpractice.method.com smartpractice method.com, as I mentioned, when you go over there, you'll be able to give us your email address and get instant access to that information. And that's a wrap. Hey, Enoch Sears here, and I have a request, since you are a listener here for the Business of Architecture podcast, Ryan and I, we love putting this podcast together. We love sharing information as much as we can glean from all the other industries that we're a part of. To bring it back to empower you as an architect and a designer, one thing that helps us in our mission is the growth of this podcast, simply because it helps other architects stand for more of their value. Spreads the business information that we're sharing to empower architects together, so architects, designers, engineers, can really step into their greatness, whatever that looks like for each individual. And so here my my simple ask is for you to join us and be part of our community by doing the following, heading over to iTunes and leaving a review of the podcast. And as an expression of our sincere thanks, we would like to give you a free CEU course that can get you one professional development unit. But more importantly, we'll give you a very solid and firm foundation on your journey to becoming a profitable and thriving architect. So here's the process for that. After you leave us review, send an email to support at Business of architecture.com let us know the username that you use to leave the review, and we will send you that free training. On the training, you discover what 99% of architecture firm owners wish they would have known 20 years ago, and now a word from today's sponsor. A while ago, I began to hear reports of a company that was helping some of our clients build remote teams. We looked into it more closely and discovered the company world teams, that was helping small architectural practitioners build remote teams that were both capable and qualified. I was intrigued by another business that addressing one of the critical pain points for small architectural practices, which is the ability to grow and shrink a team effectively, to be able to handle higher workflow without having to staff up significantly, and also being very sensitive about labor costs, world teams is built to address these issues. World teams is a small but mighty company that helps architectural practices build high performing remote teams quickly and efficiently, saving you the headache of sorting resumes and interviewing under qualified candidates. World teams operates in your time zone and prioritizes near native English speakers, ensuring clear and efficient communication with your remote team members. They have flexible contracts so you can adjust your team size as your needs evolve. Additionally, you're connected directly with your skilled professionals, which fosters trust and collaboration and world teams helps you reduce your operating costs without compromising the quality that is so important to a practice. To download a free guide for building a remote team for a small architectural practice, go to Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams. That's one word. Business of architecture.com. Forward slash world teams, as a reminder, sponsorship is not an endorsement, and you must do your own due diligence before entering into any business relationship. Go to Business of architecture.com, forward slash world teams. The views expressed on the show by my guests do not represent those of the hosts, and I make no representation. Promise, guarantee, pledge, warranty, contract, bond or commitment, except to help you. Conquer the world. Carpe Diem.

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