Once upon a time in a land far, far away…ok, fine, it was a teeny tiny town of 5,000 people in Nebraska…a nerdy teenager dropped out of band to take a mechanical drafting class. From there, she took architectural drafting, learned how to hand draft on vellum and make legitimate blueprints. Next thing you know, it’s 2018 and she’s been working in an architecture office for seven years and she’s just a few heartbeats away from becoming a licensed architect.
If you haven’t guessed yet, this is MacKenzie writing this latest blog post. For those of you who aren’t super-familiar with who I am, I figured this was a perfect opportunity to introduce myself.
How did I get to California anyway?
I often ask that myself. My dad was a college professor at a private university in Nebraska and, long story short, I had a list of about 200 schools I could attend with a special scholarship to keep my school loans to a minimum, i.e., nonexistent. I narrowed my choices down to the four schools offering architecture degrees, and out of those, chose the one farthest from home. Isn’t that how everyone determines their future? After graduating from college, I offered to help one of my super-hip, cool college professors (Hi Tracy!), who was organizing a local art walk, by creating a few renderings for her architecture office. Fast forward to present day, and I am currently one-quarter of the TAS design team and have been working with Tracy since 2011. Time flies when you’re having fun, huh?
Why are we starting a blog?
After joining Tracy’s architecture firm, I quickly became the #1 office nerd keeping the office up to date and pushing us to work efficiently and accurately, utilizing all the tools we have available to their fullest. After all, the less time it takes us to document a building, the more time we get to design, right? Tracy and I have shared the methods of our madness to a handful of crowds: from a BIM Symposium in Washington, D.C., to a Dwell on Design continuing education course, even a local ArchiCAD user group meeting. After each gathering, about half the crowd’s eyes are glazed over with information overload but there are always a handful who come up afterwards saying “THAT. WAS. AWESOME!” Sharing is caring, and we firmly believe the more we work and learn together in our field, the more the entire architecture profession will benefit.
Tracy’s instinct to share knowledge was to write a book but when I reminded her it’s 2018, she finally agreed a blog was a lot more accessible. The blog could also help us start a dialogue on those hot-button topics relating to architecture (yes, housing debate, we mean you!).
As I mentioned above, I have also been struggling through the process to become a licensed architect; let’s just say a lot has changed since Tracy got her license in 1989. The Architect Registration Examination (ARE) is currently transitioning from version 4.0 to 5.0. I lucked out and was able to take only five exams (instead of six or seven) and have officially passed all divisions of the ARE! Once I can wrangle all the documentation needed to finalize the licensure process for the State of California, I will be official. I plan to have a celebration full of fun games for everyone: Architecture Jargon Bingo (better study up on all the terms from our last post!), Building Code Jeopardy (what is LAMC 12.21 c.10?), and Pin the Tail on Frank Lloyd Wright! Who’s excited?
