I was thinking about the day I knew I wanted to be an Architect. I really didn’t know what it meant, but there was something stirring inside me that brought me down this path. As a ‘little’ kid, I had the same dreams as anyone else. By little kid, I’m talking 6 or 7 years old. My earliest memory is wanted to be an astronaut or scientist. I loved looking up at the stars and was fascinated with space travel. I was 5 when man landed on the moon and I watch every moon landing with my family.
I was probably 8 or 9 when I got a chemistry set. That was amazing, I still remember some of those early experiments. Mixing stuff and seeing the results. Studying the results to understand how it worked. Chemistry in High School was a favorite subject, just not quite number 1. That would be reserved for Drafting. Before I go down the rabbit hole of chemistry, let’s go back to that moment when I knew Architecture was my destiny and the road traveled to get there.
I was Thirteen and in Middle school. Shop Class included 6 weeks of mechanical drafting. Like a bee to honey, I loved the class. The memory gets a little fuzzy, but either for my next birthday or Christmas all I wanted was a drafting set. My mom must have known something, because I got one as a gift. Now keep in mind, my parents didn’t have a lot to go on, but they did an amazing job. My first drafting set included a small drafting board, T-Square, 30 & 45-degree triangle, French curve, compass, tweezers, lead holder and eraser.
You read that right, I said tweezers. At thirteen years old, I had no idea that it was an old-style ink pen that you inserted into the compass. I don’t think it was until college that I knew what it was for. Getting back to that first drafting set. I would spend hours just drawing stuff, while everyone else was outside playing. It was quite the experience getting lost in other worlds.
I could create anything on paper. Beside drawing houses, buildings or objects. I wrote an entire technical manual about future Space Fleet. This entire universe was my personal escape. I went looking for some of my early drawings to share in this blog. I remember one I did for my grandmother of her dream house. The only requirement was the master bedroom had to be away from the other bedrooms. Not sure what that was about, because Grandma loved her children and grandchildren. But while searching, I found the characher of me. I was 15 at the time and I had to tell the artist what I liked to do. I know I told him proudly, drafting!
But let’s rewind a couple years back to 13, before jumping into the journey, which is . I think we all have defining moments. For me it was mechanical drafting. Little did I know what it meant to be an architect. I only knew that I had a passion for the drawing. The tools have change, I started on the boards and traded them in for a computer and did CAD. CAD evolved into BIM. Along the way I have always tried to leverage the latest tools. If I could go back and tell 13-year-old me to do something different, I wouldn’t. I might have told younger me to take a different path, but the end result would be the same. Even though it has been 40 years since that moment, Architecture is so much more than drafting, I still enjoy drafting and have no regrets.
…and now for something completely different.
There are more lifeforms living on your skin than there are people on the planet.