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If you haven’t read any Herbert Muschamp (the late architecture critic of the New York Times and elsewhere) consider it.  And Jane Jacobs, too. And Lewis Mumford. These are a few of the best writers on urbanism this nation has ever produced. Through their assessments of cities, buildings, and landscapes they illuminate not only the stories behind specific works, but also the broader context.  They ask big questions. What does design mean? Why does design matter? How can we see our surroundings more vividly.   So they’re great reads for design professionals—part of the canon, if you will, beside Design With Nature and Gardens Are for People.  But don‘t necessarily rush out and buy Muschamp’s collected works, or Jacobs’s Death and Life.  Instead buy this book: Writing About Architecture by A...Read More

Last post, I yammered on a little about mentorship; something that I think is tremendously valuable and rare. Useful information doesn’t always come from “above”, though, and I think we’ve got a lot to learn from all levels – so this time I wanted to find out what it was like to be an intern. Meet Rebecca Sunter (Hi, Rebecca!). Rebecca is entering her second year as a Master’s degree candidate at UC Berkeley this fall. This past summer, she had three internships. One of them was at PGA design, an established Landscape Architecture firm in Oakland, CA. Rebecca also worked for a relatively new interdisciplinary design firm, Hyphae Design Laboratory, also in Oakland, CA. Her third internship was for the San Francisco Planning Department. As before in these three posts, the answers given below...Read More

A mentor is a person who is more experienced than you are (in either the same field or a closely related one) who helps and guides you in your career. I thought this concept was simple enough until I had a few conversations with someone who’s direct supervisor is called his “mentor”. “Baloney!” I said (paraphrasing) “A mentor CAN’T be your supervisor!” Sure, you can find career advice anywhere – see the 6 Pieces of Advice that I gathered – but that isn’t mentorship, either. A true mentor is typically someone who(m): Is more experienced than you are Knows you personally You admire and trust Helps you think through things so that you can make decisions Cares about how you’re doing Helps you understand your own strengths / weaknesses and what to do about them Will tell you WHY A mentor ...Read More

I love how stuff comes together sometimes. I recently overheard a conversation between a firm principal and a prospective Landscape Architecture student. This principal probably spent 45 min answering questions, and gave out plenty of information about the profession. They reminded me of discussions I had when I was a student which got me thinking. Where do people get career advice? Did anyone give you good advice before/during/after your schooling to be a Landscape Architect? Following are a couple of the best pieces of advice I’ve gathered along my journey, but don’t let that keep you from putting your two cents in the comments! “Always assume that your client is Interested, Intelligent, and Ignorant.” – CG “You can put up with it, change it, or leave it.” – RL (and another friend’...Read More

Last post, I put up some benefits of losing your job. Here, I want to illustrate how important networking is to getting that job in the first place. I realize I am jumping around a bit, but when this story came to me, I just had to share it. First, let us go backwards to a piece of advice I got years ago… When I was a student, I attended a lecture where an employer said in his presentation that the best thing we could do to find work after graduation was to keep in touch with everyone we met, including himself. I have never forgotten that advice, and today I heard a story that I think brings it to life rather nicely. It is a story about someone getting a job just last month after an extended amount of time (almost 4 years) being “self employed” (unemployed) and I thought it had sever...Read More

Last time I posted, I was concerned with copyright issues and Pinterest. But today, I had a conversation with a friend who inspired me to finally put down something that’s been on my mind: the benefits to losing your job. When I started this post, at first I listed all the things you get to do with your new-found free time: like visiting museums and truly enjoying a cup of coffee. I listed a dozen amusing free-time things before I remembered why I was writing about this, and that I’d covered those things before. Getting laid off can be good for you. Call me crazy if you like. I felt the same way when a guy at my first “real job” told me that he believed everyone should get laid off at least once in their career, but hear me out. The following are 7 opportunities that you can be...Read More

Last time I shared some information about the latest in the PLA/RLA/LLA saga. Today, I want to send out a few thoughts about Pinterest. Here’s where this came from: A project I worked on at a previous employer won an award. I saw photos of this project pop up on Pinterest.com, which was a bit of a thrill, but it also raised some questions. You see, that employer and I have an agreement that I will not put images of work from that firm up on the (publicly accessible) internet due to the larger privacy issue with individual clients and their homes. I am, of course, free to include images in my printed portfolio (which is not publicly accessible) as a representation of my professional experience while under the employ of that Landscape Architecture firm. So what does one do when this ha...Read More

Last time, I talked about all those lovely credentials we can earn and some of the reasons for going to the trouble to add them behind your name in business correspondence. Today, I want to look at the most important one: Landscape Architecture licensure/registration credentials. Landscape Architects have been feeling the pinch of ambiguity for a while now, and in an economy such as this one has been, that ambiguity translates to a financial pinch as well. This has been a popular topic of discussion for a while, but we can’t seem to agree on how to solve it. Perhaps our tremendous diversity and small numbers have something to do with it, perhaps not, but we’re all keenly aware of the misconceptions that we are fighting. Whatever your opinion of the root causes, there is at least one thing ...Read More

Last post, I tried to get after demonstrating the intangibles that make you desirable as an individual in addition to the projects in your portfolio. Today, I think it is important to look at one little detail that makes a big difference. A few little letters after your name could represent your membership in an organization, whether or not you are licensed as a professional, or that you have earned an advanced degree or other certification. But who cares, right? We’re all so brilliantly creative, we don’t need that. As Landscape Architects, we have the responsibility to do good design work that respects the environment, protects human health and safety, and improve the quality of life for all living things! Who needs to take another stupid test? You do. Whatever your talents are, having t...Read More

We all want to stand out as unique designers while at the same time hoping that our portfolios will be accepted as meeting expectations, right? We hope that our portfolio is good enough gives the right number of samples, contains all the needed information, and projects professionalism. In the last post, I challenged you (and myself) to do more hand drawing as that seems to be one thing that is often lacking in Landscape Architects’ portfolios (and hand-drawing is one place where your work is never just like everyone else’s). Consider this: if we as designers accomplish the expected professionalism, samples, and information, but nothing more, how are we really going to stand-out and make ourselves memorable? I can’t answer that question for you – each of us is unique – bu...Read More

My New Year’s Resolution is to sketch more. This decision was inspired by a couple of things from the ASLA 2011 Conference in San Diego (last post on that here): First, I attended an education session given by James Richards entitled “Freehand Renaissance Drawing and Creativity in a Digital Age”. Mr. Richards inspired me to do more hand drawing and shared a couple of cool sketching resources: Urban Sketchers and Sketch Crawl. You can also find lots of advice and examples in the Graphics group on Land8. Secondly, shortly after the conference I chatted with two of the professionals who had worked as judges in the portfolio reviews. Below are some of the comments they shared with me about the portfolios they had seen: Most were really well done; the graphics were superb in most instances. The...Read More

Last post, I listed some questions to ask in an interview. Since then, I attended the education session “Today’s “New” Job Market: Current Trends and Perceptions in the Hiring Process” at the ASLA professional conference in San Diego so that I could report back what they said to you. Below is a consolidation of my notes. The opinions here are those of the panelists and of employers they had surveyed about what was desired from emerging professionals. You may have noticed with the Interview with an Employer posts that opinion varies from person to person, so when you read this, it may not indicate what your next interviewer is looking for, but is merely a good starting point. Hand graphics: plan graphics are the most important, followed by the ability to produce quick sketches. Good renderi...Read More