from Intern to Architect

Guest Blogger Willard Williams: Designers Masquerading as Architects

Designers masquerading as architects is a topic within the profession that bothers me deeply. I have had numerous co-workers (architectural educated/trained designers) publicly call themselves architects at cocktail parties, around their peers, to the general public… One even went so far as to be published being referred to as an architect in printed media. I contemplated calling the California Architects Board and filing a complaint against him as he was working

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What’s in a name: Want to call yourself an Architect?

This is the second post dedicated to all the emotion and confusion surrounding the word architect. In all fairness, I could have used the person I singled out in the first post as the non-architect instead of Carlos for this post. The results would be pretty much the same. But I wrote this article first and I also know Carlos, so there’s some added personal touches that I find poignant.

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Unlicensed Architects: Why does it feel bad to be right?

This is the first of a few posts I am going to write on all the emotion and confusion surrounding the word architect: unlicensed architects, who can be called an architect, the licensing process itself, other industries co-opting the term architect, and other related topics. Future posts will aim to approach these questions from a few different angles. There’s a really interesting conversation exploring this topic over on LinkedIN. Check

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Generation Y Unfolding – DesignIntelligence Article

In addition to all the posts on Shoegnome and BIM Engine, I’ve had the pleasure to write for some other venues this year (both print and digital). I’m proud of all of those articles, but there are two that I’m exceedingly excited about. One’s not out yet, so I can’t say anything about it (other than that it’s awesome); but I can tell you about the other. I am thrilled

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What does my journey as an Architect look like?

My career has gone astray I followed the proper path. Summer internships, an architecture job right out of school, hopping between firms to climb the ranks, getting exposure with different project types, taking on leadership challenges where possible, moonlighting anytime the opportunity arose. Then a funny thing happened on the way to becoming the Project Architect/Design Architect I assumed I wanted to be. I met ArchiCAD. We fell in love.

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Reading the Economist hindered my job prospects, but helped my career

Maybe certain former co-workers won’t like me sharing these kinds of stories. But I doubt they’ll ever read them. And if they do, I hope they can understand that this isn’t about us; it’s about something much larger. I can’t remember when it happened. I think it was during an annual review. But it might have been during one of the dozen meetings I had with various co-workers leading up

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Get on the Collaboration Bus. Or Quit. I don’t care which.

 The Generation Y Architect In February 2012, during a session at the AIA Minnesota Leadership Forum, I discovered that I am a stereotype. Painfully so. I am Generation Y. In a room with fifteen Generation X architects, I was the oddball. It happened again when I was at the AIA Minnesota Board Retreat eight months later. It was a room of fifty architects. We had to order a list of

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A tale of Three (Capital A) Architects

Yesterday I wrote this other post. You might want to read it first. But you don’t need to. In fact your ignorance of that discussion (amazing comments by the way), might help answer the riddle below. A tale of Three (Capital A) Architects Three Architects are walking down a road. They have just been asked by the Wealthiest Man in the Land to design the Greatest Building Ever. Each is

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Emerging Professionals and writing for the CRAN Chronicle

UPDATE 09/11/13 – The AIA CRAN Chronicle is always looking for submissions for current and future issues of the newsletter, so ignore the dates below and send in your stories. So you might recall that I wrote an article for the AIA CRAN Chronicle recently. Well I enjoyed it so much that I’m now part of the editorial team putting together future issues. We’re now looking for content for the

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