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00:00:01
Mark Walsh, FAIA: Principal and Global Director of Technical Design, Perkins & Will
34 Plays1 year ago
Mark has over twenty-five years of experience in design and coordination for all phases of project design and delivery, from programming and pre-design through construction contract administration. He is licensed to practice architecture in 33 States and the District of Columbia. Mark's experience includes numerous project types, including higher education, K-12 education, corporate, commercial, civil, cultural, transportation, healthcare, science and technology, sports and recreation and corporate interiors.
As Perkins & Will’s Global Director of Technical Design Mark has a focus on developing a firmwide culture that delivers design and technical excellence while embracing innovative delivery and construction techniques and seeking to improve efficiency across all aspects of the Firm’s work. Mark also co-chairs the Firm Wide Technical Design Community and is a member of the Firm’s Project Delivery Board.
In his complementary role as Technical Director of Perkins & Will's Chicago Studio, Mark oversees the technical design, quality assurance/quality control and project delivery of all architectural and interior design projects delivered by that studio.
Finally, Mark is a co-founder of the Perkins & Will Innovation Incubator and has been an active member of the selection and oversight committee since the program's inception in 2010.
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Transcript
Types of Architectural Projects
00:00:24
Speaker
No, it was all pretty straightforward. Yeah. Okay. As long as this is all relevant, I mean, I know it's kind of a birth role profession. Not at all. We've had a lot of architects, or I guess I've had a lot of architects on the show, but they've mainly been involved with small scale residential construction. Right. Or maybe doing industrial projects in Chicago. But I'm really curious about technical design because it's strangely difficult to find an objective definition online of
00:00:54
Speaker
What this is like, I know your work involved quality control. I know you're doing a lot of stuff with innovation at Perkins and Will.
Architect's Role and Responsibilities
00:01:01
Speaker
What is it exactly that you do? So my job is really focused around. I'll use some jargon project delivery is what, what I kind of refer to it as, which is really, it's a huge umbrella that covers a lot of parts of what architects do from.
00:01:22
Speaker
documentation code review and compliance for building nodes and energy codes, detailing like how parts and pieces go together, how to keep the water out.
00:01:35
Speaker
how to ensure that the buildings perform well. And it's kind of, I think of it as design at a very, at a much smaller scale, like not big picture conceptual design, but really pulling a design through a building all the way to the fine detail level.
Career Pathways in Architecture
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. And your education is just a, I don't want to see like a typical architecture degree. I know that you did study architectural studies at U of I, right? Which is not necessarily prerequisite to getting that master's.
00:02:12
Speaker
It's not a prereq, but it is a pretty typical. So, architecture education is typically either a five-year professional degree, which would be a Bachelor of Architecture, or it's a 4-2 program like what I did, which is a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Studies, followed by a Master of Architecture.
00:02:34
Speaker
Okay. And so the reason that I ask about that is because I'm wondering if there's any sort of specific trading that you wouldn't need to get sort of, if your design eye is a lot more nitty gritty than what most architects would really have to consider on the day-to-day or as we've also learned on the job, I guess. Cause you've been, you've been in your industry for so long. Yeah, it's been, it's been a while. The grad school does tend to allow that
00:03:03
Speaker
It's not quite specialization, but it is branching off into areas of more focus. So you can take a more big picture design focused route through grad school. You could take a management focus. I took what at the time was called practice, which really was about the kind of stuff that I ended up doing and kind of enjoying and being good at.
00:03:32
Speaker
What does practice look like? I mean, do you follow other architects? It's instead of the difference, kind of the big difference that I saw in that was that rather than doing kind of all theoretical competition type design projects, it was a lot of the time in grad school was focused on, um, this is a real project done by a real from.
Education and Early Career Experiences
00:04:00
Speaker
here's the information they got. Now you kind of developed this project based on all those real life constraints. So that's really the practice part of it was really, it was apparent in the fact that it was a real building project that was actually built. I mean, we were doing our own design and development of it, but it was
00:04:24
Speaker
having to deal with all of those real life constraints that you don't always have to do in university setting projects.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah. So I actually have never asked about the nitty gritty breakdown of what architecture as a master's degree really looks like, but you touch on something interesting. So this practice pathway is very like distinctively different from a competitive aspect or like a more of a competitive aspect of architectural school. Sorry. What is that? Sorry. I forget that not everybody talks in the language that architects talk in.
00:05:04
Speaker
like we do architectural competitions even through practice right where you get a brief you get a certain amount of time to do it and you usually have some parameters and those competitions are sometimes strictly theoretical right they're never going to be a building they're never going to be a real project they're just
00:05:26
Speaker
design exercises. And so it's not competition in the sense of competing against one another, it's competition in an architectural competition as a design process. Sure. And so we didn't really do those kinds of more theoretical projects.
00:05:48
Speaker
in grad school, it was really much more focused on actual projects that the faculty had gotten from people in firms that they know. That is so cool. And was this the focus of your first job out of U of I? I know you worked somewhere for five to six years before transitioning into Perkins and Will. Were you also very technically oriented?
00:06:13
Speaker
I was, I didn't exactly know that was my path at the time. But it was a, my, I've only had two jobs. I've been working for 30 years and I've only had two jobs. But it was a small firm. And because it's a small firm, you do a lot broader of a job.
00:06:38
Speaker
Sure. And it was a firm where we did primarily public libraries. That's almost exclusively what the firm did. Yeah. But it was six months out of school, I got a project. And the partners said, here's your project. Finish this and don't get a suit. Got it. And I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah.
00:07:06
Speaker
Did you thrive on being handed all of that responsibility right out of the gate? Or did you feel more, I like to ask everybody this who went to grad school, like for a specific field, did you feel as though your masters had taught you how to
Licensing and Professional Development
00:07:20
Speaker
be an architect at that point?
00:07:23
Speaker
No, and I don't, I don't think so. And I don't say that as a negative, actually. You know, I think what architecture school teaches you is a little bit of how to be an architect and mostly how to think like an architect, how to, how to kind of approach problems, how to tackle those things, how to think kind of creatively and holistically and all of those. I think you learn how to think.
00:07:47
Speaker
rather than learn how to do the job. And I think that's okay. It's an apprenticeship type profession. You know, nobody out of the gate
00:07:58
Speaker
knows how to be an architect, you know, right out of school. So I felt equipped in some ways because I'd done work on an actual project in the context of a real project. I'd done that and been critiqued by, you know, in that process in grad school. We came to, I actually totally coincidentally
00:08:27
Speaker
the firm I visited when we came up for, for reviews from Champaign to Chicago was Burger Midwill. So I ended up meeting people in grad school that I would meet again, six or seven years later, just totally coincidental. But so I, you know, I kind of had my, my grad school work critiqued
00:08:55
Speaker
and assessed by professionals, by people who were architects working, who had actually done this actual project for real. And so that was a really useful part of my grad school education.
Choosing Architecture as a Career
00:09:15
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:09:16
Speaker
Now, Mark, did you grow up with architects in your family? Because it is at least these days a little bit rare to see somebody like graduate with a degree in something and actually go and work in that field.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah. I would buy like dad or mom or? No, I didn't know. I'd never met an architect. I'd never known anyone who did it. It was kind of a, I decided to go to architecture school because I had a drafting class in high school that I was really good at. And I really enjoyed, you know, and this was,
00:09:57
Speaker
mechanical drawing, right? So it wasn't sketching, it wasn't the artistic side, it was the really functional side of the drawings. And I was, I love to do it. And I was really good at it. And I thought, well, I'm interested in buildings, kind of, and I'm really good at this part of the drawing part. I guess I should go to architecture school.
00:10:18
Speaker
Are we talking like AutoCAD type sketching? No, this was 1985. No, 1989. It was 1989, right? So there was no AutoCAD.
00:10:37
Speaker
There was a little of it, but no, this was hand-drawing with pencils on paper, which is almost all of what I did. That's all of what I did in undergrad. I didn't touch CAD until grad school.
00:10:53
Speaker
So you're saying that what you were doing in this class in high school wasn't necessarily artistic, but I get the sense that it must be at least a little bit. If you had to describe your personality and academic inclinations a little bit as a high schooler when you found this class or when you were in college, would you say that you tended to gravitate towards drawing, towards engineering type thinking? What was it about the field and these activities that you liked?
00:11:20
Speaker
It was more the engineering type things that I gravitated towards. You know, there's some element of art in any of these drawing things, but it was really, you know, this class in high school, it was drawing gears and, you know, threaded screws and those kinds of things. So it was really precise. It was really a very hard line drawing.
00:11:47
Speaker
And that is kind of what I gravitated towards through, you know, I was interested in artistic things, but, you know, I can sketch reasonably well, but I'm not a great artist.
00:12:02
Speaker
So you had this interest in high school, you completed that introductory class, and did you start in college as an architectural studies major, or did you switch into that at some point? No, I applied to architecture school. Okay,
Post-Graduation Job Challenges
00:12:15
Speaker
nice. At the time at U of I, the only architecture class you did the first year was a big lecture, Arc 101.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, 250 person lecture class was really, it had no hands on component. They basically told you, you're going to work a lot and not make a lot of money. So half the class dropped out.
00:12:46
Speaker
Okay. So then, I mean, if you could go back, would you have majored in engineering or something sort of peripheral to a major that just kind of generally studies the field or are you happy with your choice? No, I'm very happy with my choice. It ended up being, you know, and I'm, I feel very, very fortunate in this.
00:13:08
Speaker
I found something that I love to do and that I'm really, really interested in still. You know, buildings and the details of it and the big picture of it and everything about the process of going from an idea to a built work is, I love it. It's really a great thing to be a part of. Absolutely.
00:13:36
Speaker
When you were leaving college, how did you transition? How did you find your first job? Did you share a passion with somebody that introduced an interviewer or sending out letters? So when I graduated undergrad, which was 93, I sent out like four dozen resumes.
00:14:01
Speaker
and got nothing. There were no jobs. It was a dip in the market. There were no jobs. And so I thought, well, I may as well just go back to grad school because I'm going to have to do that eventually. Anyway, two years later, I
00:14:16
Speaker
I was supposed to go on a road trip with my friend right after graduation for some indeterminate amount of time. He totaled his car the day before we were leaving. And so I thought, well, I guess I'll get a job. So I did the same thing. I sent out a whole bunch of resumes. I didn't know anybody. I didn't work in architecture summers or anything through college. I just took jobs to make money.
00:14:43
Speaker
And so I didn't have contacts. I didn't have any network of any kind. So I just sent out a bunch of resumes and got a couple of offers and had a few interviews and took the one that seemed the most interesting. And so that's it. I mean, that's as much as there was to it.
00:15:03
Speaker
sort of trial and error. I hear now from people who are applying to jobs that it's kind of a similar process. You send out a hundred
Architecture vs. Other Professions
00:15:11
Speaker
resumes and you're not even sure if they're ending up on anybody's desk.
00:15:15
Speaker
But I wanted to ask, is architectural school kind of similar to the stereotypes that we hear about in law or business where you're like going up against everybody and gunning to get into one of four companies because they're the most glamorous and pay the most? Or is it more of an individualistic output kind of where you graduate and people very much gravitate towards their interests? It's the latter, for sure.
00:15:43
Speaker
It's funny because the architects get kind of lumped into this professional class of lawyers and while the training is much the same and you work a lot, the compensation is really, really different.
00:16:02
Speaker
So yeah, so people who pursue architecture and people who excel in architecture do it because we love it because we love the profession because I mean not to say that you don't you don't make a good living and not to say that you don't get paid well, but you know architects are not rich people. Yeah, we just found it's not a profession that pays like a lawyer by any stretch.
00:16:28
Speaker
And you work a lot. You throw yourself into the projects and you really invest a lot personally in the work. And so that's why people do it.
Path to Becoming an Architect
00:16:41
Speaker
People who are really good at it.
00:16:43
Speaker
are personally invested in the outcome. Right. It kind of sounds like there are different kinds of personalities with an architecture, like somebody who is willing to sit at a desk for hours and complete a project and very much identifies as an architect, period, is a very different person than somebody who is majoring in architecture and then going to business school and then trying to become a developer of some sort, like the tracks are separate.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, really, really different. Yeah, personality type tends to be very different, focus tends to be really different. Sure. You know, the people that stick out, I would say if you make it through architecture school, you've kind of done your trial by fire, you've given, you've kind of made the personal decision that
00:17:34
Speaker
this is the thing that you want to do. Yeah, not ever, not everybody, of course, but the majority of people who graduate architecture school, I think become architects.
00:17:43
Speaker
Well, and I think it's important to clarify here too. And I have to admit a little bit of ignorance in this realm because I was not sure this was the case until my friend actually, who is a structural engineer, explained this to me is you're not an architect until you have your masters of architecture, right? Like just because you study it as a subject in undergrad doesn't necessarily mean that you've gone to architectural school.
00:18:05
Speaker
Yes and no. Undergrad, you get a really good education in architecture and you understand a lot about what the profession is. You're not really an architect until you get licensed. You can't get licensed until after grad school and after several years working and then you sit a licensing exam. Technically,
00:18:33
Speaker
you can't call yourself an architect until you're licensed. And there are states that will go after you for practicing without a license if you even call yourself that. It's regulated by state. But it makes sense to a high degree you're working on plans that could quite literally kill people if they're not logical.
00:18:56
Speaker
Okay, so then when it comes to your own personal journey, you graduated from U of I, you got a job at this company that specialized in libraries. And at what point did you get your actual licensure?
00:19:07
Speaker
So at that time with a master's, you had to work for, it was about two and a half years. You had to log your time. You had to get work experience in various parts of the profession and various parts of a project. Sure.
00:19:27
Speaker
And then you are eligible to sit for the exam.
Joining Perkins and Will
00:19:32
Speaker
So I, I was very motivated to get licensed. It was really, really important to me personally to get licensed. And so as I, I got my job, I logged my hours as soon as I was eligible, I signed up for the exam, which is at the time was I think seven parts. Sure.
00:19:54
Speaker
It was a week, most of a week's worth of test taking, just completely debilitating process of intensive test taking. And I passed on the first try, which was satisfying for me. So I got licensed in 1998.
00:20:19
Speaker
I have so many questions about this. Is it uncommon for people to pass on the first try? Yes. I wouldn't call it rare, but it's certainly not a sure thing. I know many, many people.
00:20:34
Speaker
who did not, and you pass section by section. So it's not like an all or nothing proposition for the seven sections, you could pass six of them and then take the seventh one two or three times and then get your license. It's not that common for
00:20:55
Speaker
for people to pass all the sections on the first go. Sure.
Notable Project Experiences
00:21:00
Speaker
Okay. So then if you fail one, you can just go back and retake that as opposed to having to read the entire grueling week of exams. Yeah. And it's, it's different now. It's I think five sections now. And most people, actually, I don't know of anyone that I know of.
00:21:16
Speaker
Most people don't schedule them back to back. They'll kind of spread them out over weeks or months or sometimes years. I was actually the first, it used to be one time per year they sat the, it's called the ARE, the architectural registration exam. It used to be completely on paper and then, and it was once or twice a year, they would offer it.
00:21:45
Speaker
And you either passed or you didn't. And then if you didn't pass, you could wait six months to do it again. I was right after they transitioned to this more piece by piece system, but I took them all back to back. I scheduled them as close together as I could because I really wanted it. Yeah. Okay. I have to ask you, what did you do to celebrate once you found out that you passed?
00:22:13
Speaker
I think I would just sleep. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, I didn't learn that I passed.
00:22:23
Speaker
You know, you got to remember this is like the dark ages. You would take the test and leave and then a week later or two weeks later, you'd get your results in the mail. Sure. You know, so I had that grueling week of testing and then I didn't know anything until two weeks later.
00:22:42
Speaker
You know, and I got these, I got the seven letters all individually. Wow. One after another. Sure. You know, over the course of a week or so, they came in the mail. It's so suspenseful. Yeah. It's fun. Yes. We're with the next one. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's like that. It's like the college application letters. Like you get it and you don't know if you actually want to open it or if you don't want to open it. Right.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah. So I promise I'm going to ask about your transition into Perkins and Will, but it honestly blows my mind that I haven't picked apart school a little bit more with other guests. Like this is fascinating. When you look upon your time getting your master's, what were the student demographics like for the most part? Like it's a bifold question. First of all, I'm curious, what was the gender ratio at the time? And also what kind of majors did people have coming into the program with? Because my structural engineering friend was telling me that
00:23:38
Speaker
She knew people who'd studied fine arts who are going for an architectural degree. And then there were other individuals who came in with strong civil engineering background. So what's your take on those? So the gender makeup was probably about 60, 40 men to women. Wow.
00:24:01
Speaker
maybe a little bit heavier on the male side, but not much. This is the time that a lot of women were getting into architecture, going to architecture school.
Career Growth and Technical Leadership
00:24:14
Speaker
The demographics of grad school was nearing 50-50. I understand it's like 50-50 now or maybe even
00:24:24
Speaker
a little bit more populated by women at this point. Sure. By a little bit. As with every profession at this point, right? Like that's a whole other discussion. But most people in, you know, and this is just my personal experience, most people at U of I had gone through an architectural program.
00:24:48
Speaker
If you didn't, there was what was called the track three, which means instead of grad school taking two years, it took three because you had to take some catch up architectural classes. Studio classes where you're doing projects, those don't exist in other curriculum, curricula.
00:25:13
Speaker
So the people that came in from either engineering or strictly arts or totally unrelated fields, they came into grad school on the track three, which meant they had a three year duration rather than the two year duration for people who came who graduated with most people graduated with either an arts or science degrees with an architectural focus.
00:25:38
Speaker
Got it. And were there like five people on track three or was it a relatively popular option? No, it was not popular. It was more like five or maybe fewer than five people. Yeah. You know, three years of grad school's a big ask. Right. And studying architecture at U of I are a huge achievement. People don't get into that to play. So, wow. Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
How did you find your way to Perkins and Will? I mean, you've been there for, is it 22 years at this point? It's 22, it'll be 23 in October. Oh my gosh. So you knew people sort of from your time in undergrad. Did you interview with them?
00:26:21
Speaker
No, I had a good friend of mine from my previous firm, from Fragile and Molinaro. This guy who I worked with, we became really good friends and still are. He knew somebody at Perkins and Will and he had had enough of the small firm doing public libraries. So he left and interviewed and got a job at Perkins and Will.
00:26:48
Speaker
And, you know, it's a name, you know, as an architect, like, you know, Perkins and Will, it's a big firm, even at that point, it was certainly in Chicago, it was an important firm. Right. And he went there and then bugged me relentlessly after that, like, you've got to come over here, you got to come over here, you got to come over here. So he's the one that convinced me, you know, I was
00:27:12
Speaker
I was very comfortable where I was. I'd been there for six years. I knew exactly how to do what I was doing. The partners liked me. I had a pretty cushy position. And so it's always a little bit scary, risky, getting rid of that and going to something that you are totally unfamiliar with. Small firm to a big firm.
00:27:37
Speaker
Can I do it? Will I fit in? Will I be able to, you know, succeed there? Yes,
Project Preferences and Industry Trends
00:27:44
Speaker
kind of nerve-wracking thing. This was also 2001. You know, I had an infant child. And I started in October. So, you know, the world was kind of, yeah, a little bit of a weird place.
00:28:07
Speaker
Um, so it was a kind of nerve wracking experience. Yeah. Well, given all of this, do you remember what your friend pitched to you to convince you to actually make that jump? Cause it sounds like the decision was stacked towards no at that point, but you did decide to move. Well, it goes, it goes back to, to all of like the whole kind of getting into architecture in the first place. It's all about the work. It's always all about the work.
00:28:35
Speaker
And Perkins and Will then, and I would just unbiased or totally biased who would say Perkins and Will did and does really good work. And so to be involved in big, beautiful, important, meaningful projects, that's why you become an architect. So that's the pitch, like that's always the pitch.
00:28:59
Speaker
When you first started there, were you given access to the big, beautiful, important projects? Or what did your club resemble?
00:29:08
Speaker
So the first project that I worked on and the project I was hired to work on was a middle school in Columbus, Indiana. And for anyone who's not a nerd architecture person, Columbus, Indiana is unknown. But Columbus, Indiana, which is about an hour south of Indianapolis,
00:29:33
Speaker
is this small town kind of in the middle of nowhere. It's where Cummins Diesel started and had their big factory. And the people who started that company created trust funds specifically to hire architects of renown to design buildings in their little town in the middle of nowhere. So as a result, Columbus, Indiana, if you look it up,
00:30:00
Speaker
you will find in Columbus, Indiana, buildings from world-renowned architects all over the place. Wow. Yeah, in an hour south of Indianapolis. Did you remember a little bit when you were working on your project?
00:30:17
Speaker
No, I visited, but it was pretty, I mean, it doesn't, like on the face of it, middle school in Columbus, Indiana doesn't sound like a very exciting project, but it was amazing. I was on a project where Ralph Johnson was the designer.
00:30:37
Speaker
That's pretty special when you're used to working on small public libraries around the Midwest. To work out of the gate on a project with Ralph was amazing. And because it was Columbus, Indiana, the team was kind of handpicked for success.
Innovation and Challenges in Architecture
00:30:58
Speaker
And we were working like crazy.
00:31:02
Speaker
crazy hours really hard, like really, really invested in this project. So I got a really good experience right out of the gate.
00:31:12
Speaker
I have to ask because I'm at home right now in the town where I went to high school and they just completed constructing this little middle school here that had all kinds of mold issues or something before, but it's a relatively, it's a basic building. And so I'm wondering with this school in Columbus, is that just a regular institution, but it's awarded all of this importance because of the architectural significance of the area? Or is it like a specialty technical school?
00:31:41
Speaker
No, it's a regular middle school. But because it's Columbus, Indiana, you know, instead of hiring a small firm out of Indianapolis to do it, they went searching and they hired Perkins and Will to do it. Yeah. Because there was money specifically for those fees. You know, and that's how the town has grown up since the fifties with this endowment for architecture. Yeah, it's a total anomaly.
00:32:12
Speaker
How do you feel, I want to take a little break from talking about Perkins and Will. How do you feel about the general trend, at least that I've observed in America, where cookie cutter houses and public buildings have sort of become the norm? Do you feel like this is the case actually? Or are there still pockets of real architectural inspiration in the city outside of primary cities like New York and Chicago and San Francisco?
00:32:39
Speaker
I don't honestly think it's much different than it's ever been. Most architecture, most buildings that you know, and most buildings you've seen are fairly forgettable. Like when you walk down any given street, there's a lot of buildings that are just there. I mean, every one of those buildings has an architecture.
00:33:04
Speaker
But not everyone is significant architecturally. And so it's always kind of been that way. Yeah, I think I think the banal stuff is more banal now than it was eight years ago, because I think there's less thought and less money in it. So they are cleaner. You know, like your your standard, you know, three unit apartment building from 1920 has a little bit of slayer. It's got a little bit of detail. It has a little bit of character.
00:33:34
Speaker
your cheap market rate, three unit apartment building today is a box with some windows in it that has less, or maybe none of that flair. Yeah. I mean, not that it was great architecture before, but at least there was a little something. I think that the general level, and this is not new since the, I would say, you know, 80s to now, it's been kind of this, the faceless stuff is really faceless.
Balancing Roles and Work-Life
00:34:03
Speaker
Which is unfortunate. You mentioned sort of briefly, I don't know if this is actually like the main cause of the trend you're describing, but is it just because there's less money that people are willing to put towards design or architects are just not paid as much as they were so they're not attracting like super flamboyant designers or? I think there's some of both. You know, I think that we haven't done ourselves
00:34:31
Speaker
a lot of favors in this profession demanding better pay, better fees. There's always somebody around the corner who's going to take the job for less if you don't. It's a self-inflicted problem as a profession. I think there's some of that. I think there's also this increasing, or maybe it's plateaued at this point, but the lack of long-term thinking about
00:35:01
Speaker
anything. But a building is an investment. You can either build a building that's going to be reasonable and functional and beautiful for a long time and pay more upfront for it, or you can build something that's garbage and pay less upfront and not think about the fact that it's going to fall apart in five years or 10 years rather than 50 years or 100 years.
00:35:30
Speaker
So I think it's, it's summables, not to be totally pessimistic about the world. I was just going to say, like, I am completely naive to the realities of this profession, but I started asking myself, why would anybody choose that latter option just to go for the cheap build? But at the end of the day, like lots of people value having a few extra dollars in their pocket at the end of the day. Right.
00:35:53
Speaker
Right, you know, and truth be told, I mean, if it's residential is different than commercial, right? I have no I have no experience in residential. I've never I've only done two or three over my whole career, residential projects at the previous firm. Yeah. So your kind of motivation, investment, personal connection to that is different. But, you know, commercial work is business. Yeah. And if you can,
00:36:22
Speaker
spend less money and pocket more. That's what business is for. It's true. It's true, regardless of profession. But okay, sorry, I took us in a tangent here. Your first project was the middle school in Columbus. And then once that wrapped up, what did you move on to? Actually, it didn't wrap up completely. We were working in the design phase. They were having a referendum for it to fund it.
Advice for Aspiring Architects
00:36:51
Speaker
Um, and that failed. So the project in that form didn't go ahead. You know, one day we got the, you know, after the, after the election, local election there, it was like the biggest balloon pop ever, you know, this team of like 12 people working 60 hours or 80 hours a week, just cranking out this great project. Suddenly it was like.
00:37:15
Speaker
pop, and the whole thing was gone. Honestly, I don't remember what the next project was. You know, because it's not always, it's usually not just one project. Usually, you know, by the time you're at the level I was at when I moved to Perkins and Will, I was just on the, essentially on the verge of what we call a project architect.
00:37:42
Speaker
And usually a project architect has a couple of projects going. Um, so it's hard to remember what all was happening. Sure. You know, the first, the first one is the first one. And personal to you too, clearly on other levels. Yeah. Um, but what was your next professional category then? So you went from project architect to what? So
00:38:09
Speaker
at least in Perkins and Will, and different firms have different kind of functional titles. I was a project, I came into Perkins and Will just below Project Architect. I was promoted to Project Architect because, you know, that's an important role in any project. The Project Architect is the one that kind of knows everything that's going on and has, you know, fingers in every bit of a project. So I started a step below that. I got promoted.
00:38:37
Speaker
Relatively quickly cuz I've been doing project architect level work at the previous firm they just needed to make sure that I could do Perkins and will project architect job and you tend to spend a fair amount of time at that.
00:38:52
Speaker
at that role, you know, it is an important role. There's a lot of growth in it based on the projects you're working on, big projects, small projects, all these kinds of things. But then a senior project architect is the next thing. And then once, you know, I know there are a lot of people in this kind of vein of the profession that that's where they, that's the title you have forever. Sure. Which is fine.
00:39:22
Speaker
You know, because that's like the all-around architect. You know, you're kind of doing kind of everything in the job, every part of the job you get to do some of.
00:39:33
Speaker
But you climbed past that. So what were you waiting for? So I did. So after that, I was a senior project architect for a while. And then after that, the person who was at the time the technical director of the Chicago office, he and I worked together very closely
00:40:00
Speaker
And he ended up leaving and that's where I moved into that spot. Okay. So it's a little bit less day-to-day project work, or maybe I guess a lot less day-to-day project work and more focused on how the office delivers work, kind of oversight of all the projects, you know. So I moved into the technical director role.
00:40:26
Speaker
where the main focus was quality control, pretty much for the most part. It's a way more multifaceted job than that. A lot of it's about quality control and quality assurance. A lot of it is about helping people solve
00:40:50
Speaker
difficult problems on their projects. The nice thing about the role is I get to touch every project that's happening in some way or another, which is really nice for me. Because I get to fiddle around in all the projects. I mean, sometimes it's not great because when things are starting to go wrong, that becomes my responsibility. But that's part of the job.
00:41:17
Speaker
Do you find yourself, and I imagine the answer is yes, because Perkins and Will is a huge firm, but do you find yourself often having to consult other experts about particular problems that you're thrown, like because you have such a wide variety of things that you're responsible for? Yes. And that's the thing that one of the parts of being in a big firm that I really, really like is that there are just an amazing number of
00:41:44
Speaker
really, really smart people that I have access to, that I can call, that I can pull onto a project or kind of throw a problem at and say, help me with this, or the project needs help with this or something. So that's a fun place to be. Are there particular project categories that, A, make you really super excited, and B, just kind of make you want to hang up the phone and not going to work?
00:42:13
Speaker
I, my favorite, my, my favorite projects that I have worked on have been higher ed projects, um, university work. Yeah. Mostly because they tend to be, they have, you know, they're institutions that are building their own buildings. Sure. They own them. They keep them. They're not going to flip them. They're not going to change them. They're like, this is something that they own. So they have a better.
00:42:42
Speaker
long-term thinking about the investment. So they're willing to invest in architecture and to make buildings significant and functional and beautiful and important in a way that's really different than other kinds of commercial work. So those are my favorite. University ones consistently have been the ones I've liked to work on the most.
00:43:07
Speaker
Healthcare, not so much for me. It's, you know, I'm most passionate about architecture and healthcare very necessarily and correctly. Architecture is second tier at best.
00:43:23
Speaker
you know, it's a functional building. It needs to function as a healthcare facility. It needs to be there to, you know, heal and treat people and do all of those functional things first and foremost. So the architecture is always secondary or tertiary or further down the list of importance. So that's always hard for me because I'm an architect. When you talk healthcare projects, are these building hospitals or like outpatient facilities or what kind of
00:43:53
Speaker
Yes, all of the above. So hospitals, outpatient, some of them are mixtures of those. Some of them are medical office buildings. Some of them are surgical centers. The whole range of healthcare-related buildings. They're always very correctly, functionally driven, rather than architecturally driven.
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah. Just not your, not your personal preference to direct. Not my personal preference. And I know people who are, who are amazing architects who are totally passionate about healthcare design. Yeah. It's just not, not for me.
00:44:35
Speaker
I totally get it. Many people in real estate, so in debt brokerage, which is what I'm currently doing, are also wary of hospitals for different reasons. Yeah, I'm sure. It's such a sticky business. Yeah, but very much needed, of course, and their priorities are where they need to be at the end of the day.
00:44:54
Speaker
Your title is global in nature. So my next question is, to what extent are your efforts focused on Chicago versus outside of the city versus outside of the nation? So right now I'm splitting my time essentially half and half.
00:45:16
Speaker
between my local role as the technical director of the Chicago studio and my global role in the firm. So it's theoretically, it's two halftime jobs where in reality, it's more like two full-time jobs. That's another thing. Yeah. How do your global responsibilities differ from your local ones here in Chicago?
00:45:44
Speaker
A lot of the focus is the same. It's just that I am working across the firm with all of our studios in helping them with the quality control and assurance part, helping them with when these really sticky
00:46:05
Speaker
situations come up, whether it's code compliance or whether it's detailing or whether I'm getting pulled into projects all across the top. But the biggest difference is in the global role, a significant part of my energy is around innovation and around trying to push us as a firm to deliver our work differently.
00:46:37
Speaker
Architects have been doing the same thing for all intents and purposes the same way for hundreds of years. We come up with a three-dimensional idea. We hammer that three-dimensional idea into two dimensions.
00:46:55
Speaker
in drawings and things. And then we give it to somebody and say, make this three dimensional, right? And there's, there is necessarily a loss of information in that process. You take a three dimensional building that you're conceiving of, and you have to represent it
00:47:14
Speaker
in two dimensions and drawings. You give it to a constructor who's never seen it before and you say, put this back together and make sure it's right. Because I know what I'm thinking. And so we have tools and computing power and ways of doing things that are different, that I think in the profession we're not utilizing.
00:47:40
Speaker
You know, we're still thinking of the project delivery in the same way we always have. Yeah. We've got to deliver them a set of drawings. Well, why do we have to do that? We don't. We can deliver them digital information. We can deliver three-dimensional information. We can deliver some stuff as database or as, you know, like when it's, for instance, you know, a project that's large has hundreds of doors. Yeah.
00:48:09
Speaker
we do on our drawings, we do a schedule of doors and their sizes and attributes and all these things. It's a big matrix. Why are we delivering that on a piece of paper? Why aren't we delivering that digitally? Skip the paper because then a contractor can take that and reorder it. If we give it to them in a database,
00:48:32
Speaker
They can categorize, they can reorder, they can figure out what, you know, a lot more information. But we're not doing that because as a profession, that's not in our mindset of how we deliver work. And so that's this whole idea of how do we work better towards the end of the end being a great building delivered well and efficiently.
00:49:01
Speaker
in a way that we work better with the people building it than we have historically. We exchange information way better and way more clearly. But it's hard to conceive of how to do things differently when you're very used to.
00:49:18
Speaker
a whole system that's been set up around what we do. But is there really so much pushback against adopting new softwares for communicating architectural plans? Like what you're describing sounds so
00:49:31
Speaker
Intuitive to me. Why would you make something 2D and then show that to somebody who has a completely different kind of education than you who's going to ask 5,000 questions about construction that maybe would never have to come out of their mouth if they saw like a 3D rendering of what you want.
00:49:49
Speaker
Right. It's a lot of it's just momentum. You know, this is the way the profession works. This is the way you do it. So there's there's a lot of that. I mean, the other thing that is worth saying about this is that every literally every single project
00:50:10
Speaker
is unique. So, you know, we're often as a profession, the architecture, engineering, construction profession is often compared to manufacturing. Like look at how many, how much more efficient manufacturing has gotten over the last 50 years. And look, AEC is flatlined at this level of productivity. It's like, yeah,
00:50:33
Speaker
I get that, but when you can refine your product as a manufacturer and then make it a million times, you can be efficient. When you're designing a new building every single time, there are inherent efficiencies you cannot take advantage of because it is different. Even if it's a prototype building,
00:50:58
Speaker
that you're doing in several locations. Everyone's in a different site. Everyone has a different set of local constraints. Even those prototypes are unique buildings that you can gain some efficiency in, having done one before. But it's not like you just pull it out of a drawer and say, do this. When you design an iPhone, you get to spend all the time designing it, and then you crank out 4 million of them.
00:51:27
Speaker
Right. When you design a building, you crank out one and then you're done. So, so part of the resistance is that there's, that it's hard to standardize.
00:51:42
Speaker
because what we do is unique every time. And so it's hard. There's some commonalities from building to building to building, but there's a lot that's unique every time. And you cannot ever underestimate the power of inertia. You have a profession that does things in a certain way, it is hard to change that.
00:52:07
Speaker
Is there anything that comes to mind, problems in the profession wise that young architects should prepare for, if not mentally, like also skill set building wise?
00:52:21
Speaker
So definitely the need to be open and able to utilize new technologies and softwares and also acknowledging that each project is going to take however long it takes because there's going to be a unique set of constraints on each one. But what else? I think that we will as a profession do a lot better the more we realize that the people we work with who aren't architects
00:52:45
Speaker
who are constructors are really valuable partners. It's grown up as an adversarial kind of relationship where the architect and the contractor fight, right? And that's how the relationship is expected to be, but that is bad for everyone. And we're moving away from it, but I think coming into the profession,
00:53:10
Speaker
with that attitude that, yeah, we have a lot of skills and we're trained and educated as architects. The people out in the field build these things, have a lot to bring to the table. So don't discount that because they can teach you some things in the same way you can teach them some things, but being
00:53:31
Speaker
being, for lack of a better word, respectful of the skill of the people that bring our projects to reality is really important and sometimes hard to learn as a young professional. You have a pretty high opinion of yourself and you're educated, you've got a license, you're kind of
00:53:53
Speaker
hot stuff and, you know, some guy with a tool belt is telling you that you did something wrong. You know, have a little humility about that because maybe you did.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, this is actually kind of an interesting point. I would have thought that a firm like Perkins and Will would have a pre-established groups of contractors that it would turn to kind of job after job. Is that not the case? Like, do you guys have to go out and consult for new teams all the time? We're rarely
00:54:24
Speaker
the driver behind that hiring. We work for the owner, the contractor also works for the owner. And so we have relationships with contractors that we have worked with. Part of it is that that's a very fragmented industry.
00:54:46
Speaker
There are a few big contractors that work across the country and across the world. Most contractors are fairly local. And so the people that our Boston office works with are going to be necessarily very different than the people we work with in Chicago. There'll be some of the same firms or some same contracting companies, but mostly not. So as a big firm, it's even harder. If we were kind of a mid-sized firm based in the Midwest,
00:55:16
Speaker
that relationship building would be a lot easier because you're in the same geographic area. For us, because we're spread out all over the place, we build those relationships locally.
00:55:32
Speaker
Right. It's much harder to figure out who actually has professional, intimate knowledge of where you want to build and what kind of difficulty you face. Even the biggest contractors don't necessarily collaborate across cities and regions. They function pretty independently. So the big relationships are hard to find for us. Yeah.
00:55:59
Speaker
I mean, we're trying and we've got a few, but it does tend to mostly devolve into regional loyalties. Yeah. Like, you know, and, you know, for us, it's different for us. We, you know, we traffic in the intellectual capital. Yeah. Right. So I can work on a project in Saskatchewan, right? A contractor can't, who's in Chicago, they have to be local. Right.
00:56:28
Speaker
And so there's that difference where we can share resources as an architectural firm across the world really pretty fluidly. Somebody who needs to build something has to be there.
00:56:42
Speaker
So it's the nature of the business. Completely different. Yeah. I get it. So speaking of, if you're talking about your local and global responsibilities as being, I mean, you're joking, but I can imagine that there's a lot of truth to it, you know, two full-time jobs. Do you have any sort of work-life balance? Is that kind of a myth? Or at least at Perkins and Well? No, I'm, I,
00:57:10
Speaker
I'm pretty good at managing my time. And while I do work a lot and while I do, um, you know, like everybody I'm tethered to my phone. Yeah. I almost never work on the weekends. Nice. Um, you know, and I, I tend to not work at night. You know, I come home and I'm done and you know, not always. And sometimes I work late and occasionally I'll work through a weekend or whatever.
00:57:39
Speaker
A lot of it is time management. A lot of it is, you know, you build up this, or there's been built up this kind of badge of honor among architects about the amount of work you do. You know, it starts an architecture school where, you know, how many all-nighters have you pulled?
00:57:57
Speaker
And, and it's, it becomes this kind of point of pride. And at some point in your life you think, yeah, that just kind of sucks. I don't want to work all the time. I want to go home. I want to relax. I want to, some of it comes out of the fact that it is a kind of passion profession. You know, I, I went by, I'm working on a project right now for the CTA.
00:58:22
Speaker
that's under construction, right? I went by today. Sir. Because I'm excited. You know, it's under construction, it's going to be great, it's going to be fantastic. You know, that part of it
00:58:34
Speaker
It remains a passion kind of thing, where it's not like I totally turn it off. I never turned it off. Yeah. I'm never not an architect, much to the chagrin of everybody who knows me. Like the nerds at it again. Loving to work and then living to work, right? Yeah.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, we are better now than we ever were before about as a profession, about understanding that people just can't work endlessly. So there is work-life balance. Yes, there is a lot of work. People do it. People do architecture. And I think you work for a firm like Perkins and Will because
00:59:23
Speaker
you love the work and it gives you great personal satisfaction when it's great. And so you tend to work more to make that happen than you strictly have to.
00:59:36
Speaker
That's for a noble cause. I like that. Yes. Yeah. Mark, I have one last question for you, but it is a little bit more involved given that you are in the leadership role that you are. When you look at people who are just starting off at Perkins and Will, I don't know how much exposure you have to more entry level types, but do you notice any mistakes or trends among them that you feel college kids should maybe reconsider or take into account?
01:00:05
Speaker
Something that is a trend that has some benefits, but also some pitfalls here is that there's a level of, and I don't want to want this to sound bad, but I'm just going to use the word that comes to mind. There's a level of entitlement that, that new professionals feel like they have. Sure. There's a meeting with the client. Why am I not invited?
01:00:33
Speaker
Like you're not invited because you have no experience and you're not going to bring anything to the table for this particular meeting, right? And you've got some work to do, but there's a level of entitlement that comes out of.
01:00:47
Speaker
new, the newest kind of batch of professionals that is like, I need to be involved in everything. I deserve to be involved in all of this decision making. And while there's a lot of benefit to having a broad group of people
01:01:04
Speaker
inputting on design problems in these kind of creative situations. There are times when you just have to do the job that you are asked to do. At a certain time, happily. And as the most junior person, sometimes you get the crappiest job. The job has to be done. The person who's been working for 20 or 30 years has earned the right to not do that job.
01:01:33
Speaker
You may not like it, but somebody's got to do it. And that's you. And at the same time, you can use those things as not just a slog through a crappy job, but there's something to learn. There's something to get that's valuable out of. Even mundane tasks that you know have to be done to get a project delivered.
01:02:00
Speaker
So I think that I think the level of understanding or an acknowledgement that this is an apprenticeship type profession. And while you learn a lot in school, if you, you know, as a graduate, you are talented, you're smart, you are
01:02:16
Speaker
really valuable. There's a lot that you never learn until you are working on projects and you go through unexpected situations, you have to solve a problem that is completely surprised to you, like that you never saw coming. And so understand that it is an apprenticeship profession that takes time to grow in. Yeah, like you don't you, you can't jump to the top just by being good.
01:02:43
Speaker
Because it's such a unique set of circumstances every time around. You need some experience on how to deal with that kind of situation. It's not that exact situation.
01:02:58
Speaker
It sounds to me like a profession that is more reliant on seasoning than a lot of others. It is. You can't intellectually power your way through everything. In some professions, you can't. If you are the most brilliant person, you can shoot straight to the top. Sure. Even the most brilliant, talented graduate out of an architecture program.
01:03:27
Speaker
will necessarily not understand a lot about what we do. Yeah. Professional enough. Yeah. Right. Okay. Any other insights come to mind for college kids who are interested in going in this direction? Even if it's not necessarily professional advice, like if you want to tell people, go to a specific bar. You know, I think, um,
01:03:58
Speaker
I think it, to me, keep your eye on the ball of opening day, right? To me, that what I love, one of the things I most love about this profession is that it creates a tangible result, right? When I'm done doing what I do, there is a building there. There is something that is changing people's lives and will be there well beyond me. It's going to outlast me. It's going to be there.
01:04:26
Speaker
And it's a really fortunate position to be in, to work in a job that has that tangible result. Sure. Like you can, and sometimes it's hard to remember that. You know, when you're in the middle of the kind of tedious part of it, there's going to be an opening day and it is the best day ever. It is fantastic.
01:04:50
Speaker
This physical manifestation of all the blood and sweat and tears. It is. It is. And you pour yourself into this stuff. But in the end, people I know who work in just about every other profession do not have that tangible result. You can't drive down the street and say, I did that. I worked on that for five years. Right.
01:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, it becomes kind of very much part of your, I think, or for me anyway, it's very much part of who I am. It's not just my job. It's very much part of what I am all about. So I think embrace that, be aware of the importance of what you're doing. And I will say the one kind of related thing is have friends that don't do this.
01:05:46
Speaker
I have friends outside of this profession because you get a little bit too, I don't know, incestuous or something. Most of my friends are not architects because you end up being kind of too
01:06:03
Speaker
Too much for normal people. Can't turn it off anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I would tell, I would give advice on where to go on champagne, but champagne is such a totally different place than it was when I was there that I kept no advice whatsoever.
01:06:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was just there, I mean, a year and a half ago, and every time I go back, it's like, what is this? Who's that? It is a different, my son goes there. Nice. Is he studying architecture? He is. Beautiful. Which is kind of cool. Yeah. But it is an entirely different place than it was when I was there. Yeah. Like the whole character town is totally different. Right.
01:06:53
Speaker
Mark, thank you so much. It's been wonderful. I appreciate your time. Thank you. This was fun. I'm so glad.