 |
Nonprofit work experience: beneficial for all, but far too rare
By Casius Pealer
Architecture Record
Public and nonprofit practices are playing an increasing role in the professional development of young architects and yield great benefits for all concerned. The entrepreneurialism, close client contact, and quality design work achieved by those fortunate enough to obtain these positions make them desirable for traditional firms who want experienced interns. Yet, the architecture profession does not support these unique training settings as thoroughly as professions such as law and medicine do, so the interns who wish to gain this kind of experience, and those who are in need of services, both go wanting.
Photo: © Jamie Blosser
Rose Fellow Jamie Blosser, AIA, was the owner's project manager on Tsigo Bugeh Village, a 40-unit affordable housing project in Ohkay Owingeh, NM. She says it, "gave me valuable experience looking at projects from the perspective of the client." She wrote grants, worked with investors, dealt with approvals and oversaw design and construction.
Success stories
The Frederick P. Rose Architectural Fellowship is a national program that places architecture graduates in design positions with local nonprofit organizations for three years. "The common thread of the fellows' work is that they often make a project where there might not be a project otherwise" said Katie Swenson, FAIA, director of the Rose Architectural Fellowship and a former fellow herself. "In many ways, a nonprofit design experience is more entrepreneurial than working in a private firm would be."
The experience of Jamie Blosser, AIA, confirms this. Blosser spent three years as a Rose Fellow with the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority, a tribal housing authority located 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Her experience managing the development and construction of an affordable housing project, designed by Van Amburgh + Parés Architects, led to her current work as an associate and director of a Santa Fe firm, Atkin Olshin Lawson-Bell Architects.
"My role as the owner's project manager was to write the grants, market and work with the equity investor, manage the budget, deal with the politics of getting approval, and oversee design and construction. This experience has given me a much bigger idea of our role as architects," she says. Now, when hiring people she looks for evidence of community-based or public work, or some greater sense of personal responsibility. "I want to see if they only look at conventional models in their life or if they have a broader perspective. That reflects on their design ability and work ethic."
Shaun Patchell, a 2005 architecture graduate, worked for one year at Florida Legal Services in Tallahassee, Fla., through a fellowship with Design Corps, a Raleigh, N.C.-based nonprofit. His assignment was to implement a design for high-quality modular farmworker housing, even though the client who commissioned the design backed out before he arrived. "I had to find a new client to demonstrate this could work, so I started attending farm worker meetings, and making connections with farmers themselves. I was selling an existing design to a nonexistent client." Eventually, Patchell convinced a willing farmer to build 10 units, and more may be built in the future.
Patchell now works at KieranTimberlake Associates, a firm noted for its use of modular and prefabricated construction. His early experience rebidding the original farm worker housing, and convincing potential clients to take on a new idea, will benefit him throughout his career.
Client Contact
Young architects in nonprofit settings often receive a significant amount of direct client contact, which is often hard to get in early years with a large traditional firm. Louis B. Smith, AIA, is a senior architect at Commercial Builders & Architects in Charlotte, and chair of the AIA's Small Practitioners Forum. Early in his career, he learned to manage complex group dynamics while working on community development projects for a citizen's district council in Detroit. This was good experience for his current practice, doing design-build work for churches. "There is no substitute for learning how to educate a client without making them feel inferior," said Smith. "And this education process often happens in a community setting, where individual clients may be developing a project together for the first and last time."
Michael Pyatok, FAIA, of Pyatok Architects in Oakland, Calif., agrees with Smith, but for a different reason. He says, "Today, architectural practice requires healthy, able-bodied young people to plug in and become extensions of computers. That affects their willingness to stay in the field and to be energetic about design. Any opportunity for interns to be physically and emotionally involved with the consequences of their own actions is invaluable." Pyatok, whose practice includes significant affordable housing work, hires interns who can demonstrate engagement in something larger than themselves. He believes they improve his firm's work environment and productivity.
Good Deeds, Good Design
Good Deeds, Good Design is the title of a book edited by Bryan Bell, founder of Design Corps, that responds to the notion that the quality of nonprofit design work must inevitably be compromised. Max Bond, FAIA, a partner at New York's Davis Brody Bond and an architect noted for his interest in underserved communities agrees with the premise of Bell's book. "I always thought that it is really an artificial separation. An interest in community and social issues in no way reduced my interest in design."
Photo: © Jamie Blosser
Blosser worked with Van Amburgh + Paréls Architects on the Tsigo Bugeh Village project.
Bond should know. His early career mixed experiences at traditional firms with time spent working in Ghana's national construction company, as well as the Architects Renewal Committee of Harlem. He recognizes that he was afforded significant responsibility in those settings that young architects are typically not given. Bond's design work and thinking are more holistic as a result. He says when prospective employees are interviewed for his firm, "We try not to compartmentalize. We seek out employees who look at life a little differently."
Non-profits in other fields
The architecture and engineering professions are unique in requiring a post-graduation internship that is typically completed entirely in a private firm setting. In other professions, providing for either a formal or informal "internship" is often done in conjunction with community or public service. Teaching hospitals, for example, help meet that profession's obligation to provide care to uninsured and indigent patients, while simultaneously enabling recent graduates to gain significant practical experience. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, teaching hospitals constitute only six percent of the nation's hospitals, but they provide nearly half of all hospital charity care. Although medical residents hold a limited license or permit to practice, they remain under professional supervision during their residency.
The legal profession does not require a formal internship, but recent graduates and their employers still confront the challenge of transitioning from an academic setting to a professional setting. The National Association of Law Placement estimates that ten percent of 2006 law school graduates took what are typically one-year positions as judicial law clerks in federal and state courts. These clerkships provide invaluable direct experience for recent graduates in a public setting, and graduates with this public experience and perspective are highly sought after by private law firms.
Supply and Demand
The design fellowships described above are the two most significant opportunities for young architects looking for these kinds of opportunities, yet together they account for less than ten positions annually for approximately 4,000 professional degree graduates. Although specific data on the total number of architecture graduates taking design positions with nonprofit or community-based organizations does not exist, Beth Miller, who directs the Community Design Collaborative of AIA Philadelphia, argues that there is far more interest on the part of young people than there are opportunities supported by the profession. "There are lots of young people who would love to take a full-time job in a nonprofit," says Miller. The Collaborative recently established a full-time position of its own for a design fellow, but can support just one fellow on a two-year rotation.
One of Miller's goals for the Collaborative is to expand the demand for full-time architectural services by community-based organizations. She does this in part by changing the perception of the role architects play. "Many organizations tend to hire design services as consultants, on a case-by-case basis," says Miller. "We try to get the ones we work with to see the value of having an architect on their board or even on their staff, to encourage a better understanding of the role of design in their community revitalization efforts."
In addition to changing the perceptions of potential clients, nonprofit experiences can be useful for interns in broadening their own views of what architects can and should do. Leslie Norvell agrees. Norvell is a landscape architect who has spent time volunteering for Miller's Community Design Collaborative and who works full-time in a local landscape architecture firm, Lager Raabe Skafte Landscape Architects. "It's one thing to watch someone else do something and think, 'Oh, I would do this differently.' And it's another thing to be in the hot seat yourself."
Given the concerns often expressed by architects about the transition from education to practice, there would seem to be significant potential for the profession to formalize positions for young architects to work in community settings. The fact that other professions have institutionalized this kind of practical training of recent graduates to meet community needs implies that the architecture profession may have a duty here as well as an opportunity. In the meantime, individual interns and the firms that hire them will continue to seek out and benefit from singular experiences in local nonprofits.
|
|
