Tag: Career

A Big Push and a Big Life Update

The blog archive is back, and I talk about where the last 9 years have taken me in really broad strokes.

So, back in October 2016 I took a long hard look at this blog and pulled it back off the shelf.

I rearranged some stuff, removed other things and generally updated the look. In the process that broke a lot of my old posts. As I wrote in Rebirth/Reinvention at that time I took a lot of the old posts and made them private. Over the course of the last almost year (11 months) I have been slowly fixing the old posts and making them public again. This process took a lot longer than it probably should, but today I decided that I just wanted to done. So I pushed through editing the remaining 160 posts and in that process I read a lot of what I wrote during 2008 to 2010, and not all of it made its way back into the blog.

160 posts is a lot of introspection, let me tell you.

I’ve been using this site lately as a means of pushing out some of the big ideas that I feel need a more formal space than a Facebook or LinkedIn post. One of the things that struck me as I was finishing the blog housecleaning is how it’s been 9 years since I was laid off as a part of the recession. In that time I’ve:

  • earned my license
  • worked for three different companies
  • opened and closed my own small design firm
  • became involved in AIA Northern Virginia and AIA Virginia and continue to serve on the boards of both organizations
  • got married to my husband
  • started a fiber business with my husband curating and dying yarn, spinning fiber, and related products – The The Fiberists, LLC/li>
  • was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes and made some drastic life changes to improve my health
  • and as of this past March, been laid off again

This puts things into an interesting perspective. These all seem like really big things, yet I’m back at a place not unlike where I was 9 years ago. I’m unemployed and have been for a long time; there doesn’t seem to be work in my field in my area for people with my range of experience currently. I’m trying to survive on a shoe string budget: I’m sharing a car, so while I am more mature and experience than in 2009, I feel less independent because everything revolves around when I will be able to run errands or otherwise. I’ve been writing a number of longer form posts on facebook which may make their way here at some point. I’m also dedicating most of my non-job search time to working on my fiber business, which I love, but is not at a place where it can support me as a full time job. Take all of that together and add in that I’m once again wondering if there is a place for me in Architecture and it really feels like deja-vu. The setting and characters have changed, but the themes are the same.

I’m not promising regular posts at this time, because we know how well that always turns out, but I find that I process things better when I write. So, I’m hoping over the foreseeable future to come back more regularly to this digital space and work through some of my career/life issues.

Home is where the LEED is

A bird's eye rendering of one of the 100k houses

[Image via Inhabitat via 100khouse]

So Inhabitat has an article which starts off like a bad joke; an architect, a developer and a builder decide to build a LEED certified home for$100,000. And that is it, there is no punchline, because its not a joke. They are building two 1000 square foot homes for $100 a square foot; they have been working at it for over a year now and just sold their first of two homes. You can read their blog and web page at 100khouse.

There are three things that intrigue me about all of this. First is that we bought our 13 year old 950 square foot condo in suburban Northern Virginia last year for $235,000 and these home are going to be/being sold for $200,000-250,000. It really highlightes the difference in cost of living and commodity. I live in a previously lived in stock developer’s condo for the same price as someone else could be living in a brand new well designed environmentally friendly single family house, and the architect/developer/contractor will all still be making a profit off of it. That just blows my mind. The second is the lack of exposure or lack fo existence of projects like this near around the country. Why are there not more affordable infill LEED housing? Why are we building more pop-up carbon footprint heavy custom builder townhomes when we could be developing LEED accredited suburban pre-manufactured well designed individual developments? And lastly, why am I not involved in a project like this? How does one go about getting ahead of the curve? Is this something that you have to wait until your licensed for, or is it something that you can make happen by being deliberate in your career path? Once you start down the road of traditional internship and licensure, is there a turnoff where you can switch into cutting edge design and urban planning? Is it possible to be something greater than an fabric building designer/builder possible without having independant wealth and patronage?

In an unrelated but yet pertinent development, I have the possibility to help a friend out with their damaged home. They suffered sever roof and exterior wall damage as well as water damage and depending on what they decide to do, they may need to do a thorough renovation. I would love to finally have the chance to think critically again and solve their design problems, to break away from institutional work for a little while and explore smaller more human forms and scales. On the other hand, if they don’t decide to go with me, the whole process has been a learning experience, one that gives me some light at the end of the tunnel and helps me to see some answers to the questions I posed above. Specifically – yes it is possible, it is all possible, it just takes time, friends and the right series of unfortunate events.

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