“The only joy in the world is to begin.”- Cesare Pavese
On Deciding to Blog
There’s a lot of responsibility in running and writing your own blog. I have prefered the freedom of posting on various forums whenever I felt I had something of value to say. Or simply on a whim. Writing on demand is much less appealing.
I’ve been sharing my personal stories, sprinkling golden nuggets of ideas on various professional networks.
Frankly, at this point in time, I feel burned out. I feel I’ve said all I can say about reforming the profession of architecture and have bared my heart and soul to my fellow colleagues on AIA KnowledgeNet. I’m rather exhausted of the whole matter. How inconvenient for this to happen when opportunity knocks!
Adding to my burn-out, is this insidious gnawing at my soul, this awful rumor about how “architecture is a dying profession.” According to RIBA, which became the topic for an #AIACHAT last spring: “Will the title of Architect be gone by 2025?” We debated it inconclusively on that Twitter chat. AIA architect Randy Deutsch’s recent interview with Kristine K. Fallon, FAIA, as one of his Case Studies for his new book BIM and Integrated Design, revealed that she felt, due to BIM, there will be no need for architectural firms in the not-so-distant future. What?!
So, what to do? How does a person write a blog about how to be a better architect when the profession is supposedly being “phased out”? Is the profession…dying, as some have been saying?
Still, We March On…
There are two types of people in this world: those that say it can’t be done while those who believe it can are busy accomplishing it.
Another Twitter chat was put together in early September, very quickly and without any hand-wringing. I’m talking about the #ArchEdu chat led by the formidable Tabitha Ponte, A-AIA, founder of the InSB school of architecture in Chicago, a new school bringing a/e/c students together under one roof. Tabitha led the discussion on what changes need to be made to improve the architectural education. After the Chat, several of us continued the conversation across a few days. It became apparent that some of the interns, who had been searching for employment for months, had a strong desire to read Randy Deutsch’s new book on BIM and Integrated Design, but felt it was out of reach due to their employment situation.
Having engaged in various conversations with emerging architects on Twitter, my heart went out to them. They, too, are frustrated. I’d been consciously brainstorming ways to help them. So, in a moment of exhuberance, I tweeted: “I’ll be gifting 2 copies of Randy Deutsch’s book on my new blogsite.”
Upon reading my Tweet, several folks expressed interest.
So, that was it. That’s how this blog began.