ArchiDad

Being an ArchiDad

Having children changes anyone.  Hopefully it does, anyway.  I know it did change me.  My wife and I were married for five years before we had children, which I think we both are glad we did.  Getting to know your spouse is quite important.  Having that time to work on your relationship before you introduce any rug rats, in our opinion, made it easier later for us.

But how did being a dad change me as an architect?  Before I get into that, it bears mentioning that my wife and I went to architecture school together.  She gets this crazy professional life.  She understands the crushing deadlines.  And even though she no longer is exactly in architecture, this life would be unbearable without a partner who understood it.  Adding children to the equation would have further complicated things.

We do all the mundane, architect-y stuff with our kids.  They had their share of building blocks and Legos growing up.  We yammer on about cool building details when we see them (and they call us nerds).  And our kids have been on more than their fair share of architectural tours.  We told the kids we are going to Niagara Falls, which of course we did.  What we didn't tell them is that we would be stopping in Buffalo for a couple days and, oh yeah, Frank Lloyd Wright has a few buildings to check out.  We went to the Smokey Mountains and, oh yeah, there's this house we need to see called Biltmore.  Now they know better, that there is at least one architecture tour per vacation.  But more so than this kind of stuff, being an architect has a lot of the same challenges to home life as other jobs, and maybe just a few unique challenges.

Just Your Typical Family Summer Vacation.

Like virtually anyone else born since the 1960's, my first encounter with an architect who was also a dad was Mr. Mike Brady.  He was the indelible family man.  Mild mannered and almost always home in that wood paneled den with shag carpet.  In this business, we can't always be home.  But luckily, we found a home that is just 2 miles from the office, so that my time is not further eaten up by a daily commute.

Yes, this is on the way to Niagara Falls, I swear.

As married couples without kids, we often came home from work for dinner "whenever".  Sometimes ate just cereal or Uncle Ben's rice.  Sometimes we ate without the company of each other.  Sometimes we had to stay until it was too late for dinner.  That changed with children.  At first, we both worked and shared cooking duties, but we ate as a family every night that it was possible.  Now, we are lucky enough to be able to live on one salary, and my wife, who is a wonderful cook, will have dinner ready at 5:00 on the dot.  This not only works for me but also for the schedules of our two, now teen aged, children.  If at all possible we eat as a family unit every night.  I am one of the first ones to leave the office in the evening in order for this to happen.  However, I often eat with the family, and return to work, sometimes within about an hour.  After dinner the kids head back to homework or practice or whatever.  But we have that hour together.

This schedule is important to us.  And it doesn't happen everyday, but the key for us is to make it the exception, not the rule, that we don't have dinner together, all four of us.  Our business requires a lot of travel.  Somehow, I got into a habit of writing a little note on a Post-It in each of their rooms the night before I leave for any overnight trips, while they're sleeping.  Now, they are an expected ritual, as if I took over where the Tooth Fairy took off.  If you've ever been overlooked by the Tooth Fairy, you know what I am talking about...

My kids almost always ask me what I did today.  There are days when I don't even want to try to explain to them the things I do in a day, but I figure if they ask, I should tell them.  As a result I don't think either one of them will pursue architecture.  I'm honest.

Having kids made me look at the balance in our lives.  Life can't be 99% work and 1% "the rest".  Before kids, that balance was difficult to strike.  Kids can have a grounding effect.  There is no getting around the fact that this business means some long hours.  So does parenting.

Sometimes it works out for them.  They got to swim in the Montreal Olympic Stadium.

In my career, I also lost my way in taking care of myself.  Over the years, bad eating habits and lack of exercise packed on the weight.  Having kids makes you think about sticking around as long as you can for them.  Last year, I made a commitment to myself (but also still for the family) to take better care of myself.  I started a better eating program and I hold two nights a week sacred for working out.  I can be flexible with the days but not with the number of days per week.  It has paid off, and after losing over fifty pounds, I essentially look at that as more time of better quality that I can spend with the three people I don't want to be without.

Cue the sappy Brady Bunch interlude music.

That is one sweet T-Square.

This post is a special Father's Day Edition of the ArchiTalks series where a group of us (architects who also blog, who are also dads) all post on the same day and promote each other’s blogs. This edition was led by Brian Paletz.  A lot of other talented writers who also are architects (and dads) are listed below and are worth checking out:

-->Brian Paletz - The Emerging Architect (@bpaletz)
#Archidad - A modern approach
-->Jeremiah Russell, AIA - ROGUE Architecture (@rogue_architect)
Happy Fathers Day #archidads
-->Eric T. Faulkner - Rock Talk (@wishingrockhome)
The Dad -- The Architect
-->Rusty Long - Rusty Long, Architect (@rustylong)
Life as an Archidad
-->Mark Stephens - Mark Stephens Architects (@architectmark)
ArchiDad
-->Larry Lucas - Lucas Sustainable, PLLC (@LarryLucasArch)
A Daddy Architects Work Life Blur and My Escape
-->Steve Mouzon - The Original Green Blog (@stevemouzon)
Fathers Day for Architects - The Empty Seat
-->Jared W. Smith - Architect OWL (@ArchitectOWL)
ArchiDad on Father's Day
Happy Father's Day everyone!

An Architect Summer

Summertime to most families means vacations.  Some like the beach or bay. Others visit family, wherever they may be.  Our family of four (mom, dad, daughter and son) tend to seek out more varied destinations.  My wife and I started dating while studying architecture abroad.  We experienced many incredible points of interest together while we were based in Italy.  We were constantly searching out places to go, not really content to relax in one place.  There was too much to see.  After school, we tended to continue this kind of travel for our vacations.  We don’t tend to sit on the beach like some like to do.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This summer, our idea was to take in Niagara Falls.  This destination seemed to get the kids excited.  I was excited, I had never seen it before either.  Niagara is a drivable destination for us, and we planned to go to the Canadian side which meant getting the kids passports, an idea they also appreciated a lot. 

During the trip planning, it dawned on us that we had to drive through Buffalo in order to get to the Falls, and I remembered that Buffalo has a high concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright sites.  Before you knew it, we booked an additional night in downtown Buffalo midway between two FLW houses:  The Darwin D. Martin House and Graycliff.  I didn’t know much about these buildings, and I learned from their respective websites that both houses were designed for the family of the executive who had convinced the Larkin Soap Company to hire Wright to design their headquarters in Buffalo, NY.  Obviously, we both knew about the travesty of that lost Wright gem, so it seemed like a good bet that these houses would be worth the visit.

The approach to Graycliff.  Notice the complete transparency on the lower level. 

Taking tween and teen children to historic landmark architecture is probably not the ideal family vacation for most (at least not for the kids).  Ours are kind of used to it.  But we also try to balance ‘educational’ vacations with fun for the kids.  Mom had the brilliant recall that there is a Great Wolf Lodge (and waterpark) in Niagara as well.  The fact that our time in Canada would be spent there satisfied the kids enough to endure a few hours in the two buildings.  So we set it up that we drove into Buffalo early enough to catch the last tour at Graycliff on the first day, and the following day we hit the Martin house for the first tour.  Immediately after the Martin tour, we would be on our way across the border; only a few miles away.

The look you may expect from an 11 year old visiting Wright homes while on vacation.

Graycliff has a quite striking exterior presence.  Appropriate to its name, it is a stone’s throw back from a cliff overlooking Lake Erie.  The exterior is well restored and is what you would expect from a Wright designed house.  It still needed some paint but the only real distraction is the rather ugly fence separating dumb tourists from their death in the Lake below.  Apparently, there was a really attractive wall built by Wright in the 1920’s; but the Lake has since devoured it as the cliff is now several feet closer to the house since 1920.

The inside of Graycliff is in stark contrast to the exterior.  It is currently completely ripped apart.  The foundation restoring the house is actually installing a fire suppression system, which I think is quite rare for any Wright restorations.  Plaster was missing in a large portion of the ceilings and walls, and the floors had holes large enough to see into the basement.  As there was no interior photography allowed, I don’t have any images to support these descriptions, but take my word for it.  You can imagine, the kids weren’t too impressed with the master architect’s work on the inside.  But Mom and Dad could imagine how the space was originally intended.  The house had suffered neglect and was, for many years, a home for a Catholic order of priests.  As we were walking away, we heard the docent talking to one of the restoration workers, and he said, “I’m going to be painting here for the rest of my life.”  All good architecture requires maintenance…right?

It wasn't all bad.  There's the weed covered chain link fence behind them.

It always shocks me to see a Wright house that is part of a larger neighborhood.  Pennsylvania has two Wright houses (three if you count one relocated here) and if you know about Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, you know they’re remote and have no other neighbors but the trees, rocks and water.  There’s no lengthy, wooded approach to it. As the house was designed just after 1900, the Martin House and the cute Victorian neighbors are contemporaries of each other.  We learned the Martin House is really a complex of several buildings.  A main house, guest house, conservatory, gardener’s house and garage.  Even though this was essentially an estate, the scale of it all really fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. The only hint that there was something special going on here was the sleek, white visitor’s center.  But even this is tucked back off the street and in a scale fitting in with the rest of the context.

Martin House from the street. 

This guy's daily commute includes cutting through the yard of a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house.

The exterior here too is what you expect from a Wright House.  Though we would learn that most of the complex had suffered from serious neglect and had to be completely rebuilt, it was done well.  The interior had also suffered greatly.  Large areas of the floors failed and were rebuilt.  Many windows were replaced.  And the work was ongoing, but enough of the house was done on the first floor that even the fine detailing was able to be revealed.  As we toured the dining room, a restorer was literally gilding the horizontal mortar lines on the interior, you know, emphasizing the horizontal as Wright was want to do.  They even had some original and reproduction furniture.  And the guest house was even closer to ‘finished’, boasting a dining room set and some excellently restored built-ins. 

What zoning???  This shot demonstrates the tightness of the site.

Even though this tour was 50% longer than the Graycliff tour it was much more palatable to the kids.  Both of them enjoyed the Martin house tour: there was no, “are we done yet’s” or “I’m hungry’s”.  Mom and Dad were in our element (we both took a class which devoted a full month to Wright in Architectural Art History at Penn State).  Our kids appreciate good architecture (we dragged them through Biltmore and Monticello already), but understandably for them, a home has complete floors, walls and furnishings and ‘stuff’.  Mom and Dad were glad that the Martin House delivered.

Success!  Well, at least we avoided mutiny before getting to the water park.

When Mom and Dad take their kids to Niagara Falls for summer vacation, somehow the blog post is a thousand words on Frank Lloyd Wright.  Sounds about right to me.

This post is part of the ArchiTalks series in which Bob Borson of Life of an Architect selects a theme and a group of us (architects who also blog) all post on the same day and promote each other’s blogs. This month’s theme is "Summer"  A lot of other talented writers who also are architects are listed below and are worth checking out:

Enoch Sears - Business of Architecture (@businessofarch)
Summer is a Great Time To Market Your Architecture Firm!
Bob Borson - Life of An Architect (@bobborson)
http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/summer-is-for-the-young-at-heart/
Lee Calisti, AIA - Think Architect (@LeeCalisti)
summer working, had me a blast
Evan Troxel - Archispeak Podcast / TRXL (@etroxel)
Lake Powell
Lora Teagarden - L² Design, LLC (@L2DesignLLC)
Seasons of Summer
Jes Stafford - MODwelling (@modarchitect)
The Dog Days of Summer
Eric T. Faulkner - Rock Talk (@wishingrockhome)
Summer -- Architecture Imagery
Michele Grace Hottel - Michele Grace Hottel, Architect (@mghottel)
/architalks-20-summer-and-architecture
Stephen Ramos - BUILDINGS ARE COOL (@sramos_BAC)
4 Secrets To Getting The Most Out Of Your Summer Internship
Michael LaValley - Evolving Architect (@archivalley)
An Acrophobic Architect's Illuminating Summer of Roofs
Sharon George - Architecture By George (@sharonraigeorge)
Glass in Architecture - Summer Wonders
Brinn Miracle - Architangent (@architangent)
4 Reasons Solar Power is a Hot Topic
Emily Grandstaff-Rice - Emily Grandstaff-Rice FAIA (@egrfaia)
Seasonal change
Jarod Hall - di'velept (@divelept)
... and the livin's easy
Drew Paul Bell - Drew Paul Bell (@DrewPaulBell)
Summer...
Samantha Raburn - The Aspiring Architect (@TheAspiringArch)
An Architectural Spark for your Summer
Kyu Young Kim - Palo Alto Design Studio (@sokokyu)
Summer in Seoul
Keith Palma - Architect's Trace (@cogitatedesign)
[Dis]Connected Summer
Adam Denais - Defragging Architecture (@DefragArch)
5 Things to Make the Most of Your Summer
Brian Paletz - The Emerging Architect (@bpaletz)
Summer Surprise
Marica McKeel - Studio MM (@ArchitectMM)
Summer : A Review
Jeffrey A Pelletier - Board & Vellum (@boardandvellum)
Do I Need to Hire an Architect?
Jared W. Smith - Architect OWL (@ArchitectOWL)
Work Projects during Summer