Our principal, Salo Levinas, recently partnered with LA.IDEA|DC on an interview series in which Salo posed a question each month to three prominent architects. This is the second of those questions and the responses from Carmen Pigem, Elizabeth Diller, and Susana Torre.

Question of the month:
What are three suggestions you would give to a young professional starting out in their career? How should they focus the early years of their career?

Elizabeth Diller
Partner in Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Architecture Professor at Princeton University

Rather than be problem-solvers, I would urge you to be problem-makers of problems worth solving, and ask yourselves: What works but needs fixing? What needs total condemnation? What is unrecoverable? And what is all of a sudden imaginable? And don’t ever let the words “risk management” enter your vocabulary.

Susana Torre
Argentine-born American architect,
Critic and educator, based in New York City and in Carboneras, Almeria, Spain

I believe that any young professional starting out in a career should ask her or himself three related questions: 1) What contributions can I as an architect make to better our environment and society? 2) What will I need to lead a productive and emotionally rewarding professional life? And 3) What pragmatic choices can I make to advance my career? Ideally, the three should work in concert with one another. Here are my thoughts on each question, derived from years of experience and observation.

1. What is most urgent today in all design professions is a commitment to adapting to and, where possible, mitigation of the possibly devasting effects of climate change, which is certain impact all our lives in the foreseeable future.
2. You should look forward to doing the work of every day, as this will contribute to your happiness and well-being This requires knowing oneself, what we are good at, what gives us most pleasure.
3. Finally, try to define your professional objectives within 5 to 10 years of graduation, making sure your employer understands where you want to be headed and hopefully having obtained by then the license to practice.

Carme Pigem
Spanish architect,
Member of the Pritzker Prize-winning architectural firm RCR Arquitectes

1. Work Hard

2. Work enthusiastic

3. Work again

Know Thyself. When starting your career, know your limits, know your motivation or simply know yourself. If you know your strengths and weaknesses, you will be able to focus much better to achieve what you are searching. And you will contribute more to your team.

Place, Program and Concept. Understanding the values and constrains of the place should have a formative and active role in the design process and in the final design proposal. The same is true for the program requirements. Both the place and the program shall be interpreted in a objective analysis but also from your personal vision which will inhale soul into your project. Your soul. Both the place and the program lead you to concepts, poetic and experimental, which will inform the design proposal. The concepts are your red line. Stick to them in all your design decisions, in all scales.

Your body is your design tool. Cultivate your ability to “read” a place by cultivating your ability to perceive all the information you receive through all your senses. This is a lifelong exercise.

Question of the Month 2 – Women in Architecture