"When we step onto the traditional path, we're told to focus on the process — that if you follow it, it will lead you to the promised land of architecture. But if you look at how that process actually functions, you realize the path is designed to serve the masters of the architectural profession and the clients they attract."
I dreamt of being an architect as a child. To this day, I am not sure what prompted me to imagine that. Whatever it was, my family and teachers took it seriously. My fourth-grade teacher who reprimanded me for speaking out in class by sitting me behind a piano, recommended Taliesin West, the Frank Lloyd Wright school, as a place to go and study. In those days, there was a standup piano in every classroom.
Being an architect has been filled with the challenges that love-inspired dreams often possess. It’s been a passionate and frustrating practice, rewarding and disappointing at times. I suppose I’m not the only architect who feels that way. Like all great loves, it taught me how to look at life, discern things in detail and introspect carefully. It taught me how to conceive ideas and realize them; how to invest in a meaningful enterprise over a stretch of time, and how to sacrifice for beliefs. It’s showed me how to make critical decisions under pressure, whether on a construction site, choosing a job, or a project to develop.
I started my career by being laid off from well-known Los Angeles firm, which hired me prior to my last term at UC Berkeley. A few weeks before my starting date, the office called to inform me that forty percent of the office was being let go. Fortunately, I was asked by the father of a friend to redesign and renovate a house he had just purchased as an investment. Not being sure how, I said yes, and agreed to a $500 per month fee. It was 1983. The course of my career had been altered from day one.
Completing the house a year later, I enrolled in SCI-Arc to obtain a five-year B.Arch. degree so I could get on with licensing as soon as possible. Upon graduating, architectural work in LA was still lacking. So, I spent a year designing television and movies sets in Hollywood. Thereafter, traveling for nine months abroad. Upon my return I moved to New York City, where I finally starting to work in an architectural office.
Three years working on low budget not-for-profit projects while interacting with difficult clients, provoked me to consider a general contractor’s offer to help them out on a project that was substantially behind schedule and losing money. The project architect was demanding that the homeless shelter they were building was executed to the standard of an uptown apartment building. Having been a client’s representative, comfortable on site from my first project, and wanting to build as well as design, I accepted it with an 80% increase in the salary; waking up to the reality that my career would take a different trajectory than the one I had planned.
Over the years I’ve compared my experiences as a design driven developer with those of my architectural friends and colleagues who have stayed the course, including my brother, an architect with a design-build office. I've experienced a sense of freedom and diversity in my career which my friends and colleagues did not seem to feel. While I’ve designed less in comparison to a practicing architect, many of which do not design that much either, I am content with the path I took.
When we step onto the traditional path, we’re told to focus on the process; that if you follow it, it will lead you to the promised land of architecture. But if you look at how that process actually functions, you realize the path is designed to serve the masters of the architectural profession and the clients they attract—with less creative, financial, or professional reward than is fair for the hard work and dedication required to become a good architect. From the very beginning of the licensing process, this becomes obvious. Compare the standard licensure experience of an architect to other major licensed professions:
Each year, approximately 6,000 architectural hopefuls sit down to take their first ARE (Architectural Registration Exam) series. The average overall passing rate is a grueling 55%. On average, it takes 12.9 years from the time a student enters college to the day that she or he receives an architecture license.
Here’s how lawyers and doctors fare. Lawyers typically spend 7 years in school and proceed immediately to the bar exam if they choose. Apprenticeship is not required. Their passing rate hovers around 60% to 70%. It takes doctors generally 8 years before they sit for the USMLE (United States Medical Licensing Exam). Their passing rate is consistently above 90%. After another 3 years of residency for general or emergency medicine (longer for specialization), doctors can set up independent practice.
In the decision to become one, most architects believe in the architectural mythology of making the world a better place and of creating beautiful, healthy and meaningful places to live, work, and experience higher thoughts as in a museum or cathedral. I did. This is reinforced by the literature and the schools, which portray the sacrifice required to achieve that goal as the price of entry to a prestigious, highly valued, and meaningful profession that will contribute to society. But the high value referred to: the professional status, and tantalizing creative satisfaction, is often devoid of the appropriate material compensation while doing mostly commercial projects driven by business demands at the expense of the architecture.
When you look at the standard income comparison in the United States, the financial ceiling of the traditional career becomes painfully obvious:
| Career Stage | Architects | Lawyers | Physicians |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry-Level(0–3 Years) | $64,000 – $87,000
| $95,000 – $140,000
| $65,000 – $75,000
|
| Mid-Career(3–8 Years) | $94,000 – $115,000
| $145,000 – $210,000
| $240,000 – $380,000
|
| Senior-Level(8–15 Years) | $120,000 – $178,000
| $220,000 – $350,000
| $310,000 – $520,000
|
| Partner / Top Tier(Maximum Scale) | $125,000 – $245,000+
| $450,000 – $1,000,000+
| $550,000 – $800,000+
|
Note: These are general averages to highlight the income disparity between these professions.
Compared to non-licensed professional like a regional sales manager or a private developer, professions that do not require an average of the 13 years it takes for architects to credential and combine that with the profound legal liabilities of the construction, architects come out poorly. Unfortunately, this is the reality of the conventional path. Our time, energy, technical capability, and design intelligence are treated by the commercialized system that most architects are dependent on as a low-margin commodity.
As my structural engineering professor hinted on that first day in class, practicing architecture in a conventional way is not the only option. There are alternative paths that provide more agency, value for your effort, and bridge the gap between traditional office practice and other forms of practice or business.
While time and money are not everything, they are fundamental measures of job satisfaction and success. As importantly, the imperative to work the way you want, with the people that you feel are most compatible with your values, alongside the other goals you have as an architect, are the daily measures that provide for both the professional and personal enjoyment from your work. That should be the goal, achieving all of those in the most appropriate method that suits you.
I knew early on that the other aspects of the building industry—construction and real estate development—were things I wanted to explore. I thought that they would open up different opportunities that the traditional architectural path would offer me. What I didn’t know then was that by choosing an alternative route I would live and work in culturally dynamic, unusual places, and achieve a direct influence over the outcome of the work I was engaged in. Being in the trenches, making touch decisions, from napkin sketch to key in the door, gave me job satisfaction in a way I never dreamed of as a kid.
I wrote this essay to provide an alternative view of a typical architect's career. I wanted to offer options for career advancement and reward; options that are available at any stage, even when other people think it's too late for a change. This is where the "Gap" referred to in the name of this website becomes the critical space to consider and meditate on other possibilities.
The gap is a moment before decisions are made or actions taken, when choices are formed, that ultimately determine the course of life. Neuroscientists call this the Prefrontal Window, a space where conscious choice resides. Most of us react automatically to events based on the constituent parts of our psyches formed in childhood, in growing up, in our culture, environment, and nature. Rather than act with clear intention we often react from a source of ready-made conditions and responses that dictate our choices and actions. The only way out of this "react trap" is challenging those ready-mades by pausing to examine them with an open mind and courage to confront them.
The question arising in any situation, in any personal or career juncture is whether the direction we are taking is a real choice based on critical assessment or a pre-conditioned reaction based on what is expected of us by others or ourselves. In the absence of taking a moment, however long, we often choose paths that are not aligned with what we truly want or reflect who we truly are. This is when the gap becomes the place to take the deliberate pause we need to look at as objectively as we can and consider next steps.
This essay is intended to present a different framework for career thinking and a method for doing so. It suggests alternatives for choosing the path that best serves you, whether you are entering the field, navigating a midstream transition, or wanting to explore more possibilities as a later stage.
We all have dreams. In ancient religion and culture, dreams were thought of as messages from the gods, the fates, or the divine future. In modern terms, our dreams often reveal the subconscious truth, desire, or vision we have for ourselves. We can wrestle with those all our lives. Or pause to identify what truly defines and expresses the life we want, the work we want to do, and how we want to go about doing it, with whom; and in doing so turn a dream into a reality the fulfills us.