If you are an architect starting out in your career, this site is for you.
The inspiration to write this blog stems from working with the amazing architects who join us each year and who are just starting out in their careers. Armed with a good deal of education and, these days, a ton of debt, they still need plenty of guidance to get started, build confidence and become proficient.
And every year, armed with not much more than a willingness to help and some projects that need working on, we clumsily roll out our 'on-the-job training'. More through luck and perseverance than by design, people do end up learning to fly. As they always have done.
But learning on the job is a notoriously haphazard and slow process. Given a combination of the increasing rate of change in the industry and the need to earn decent money sooner, I felt that there was more we should be doing. A lot more.
I wanted to know what we could do to help speed up, or at least make more effective, the transition from architecture school to practising architect. It seemed to me that after all that time at university, and all that debt, we should find a way of fast-tracking people to proficiency and the increases in productivity, salary and enjoyment that come with it.
What if we put some structure in place? What if we wrote some of our training down? What if we shared the best sources of information, how-tos and practical case studies? What if we discussed how to learn and how to get good at things?
So that is how this blog came into being; it’s a sincere attempt to help, as well as a tool to reflect on my own experiences of learning, training and building practical expertise with early career architects. I hope it’s useful and I look forward to receiving any constructive feedback.