-: I think the key in college is
there's so many opportunities to meet people
and interact with people that are different than you,
and that's really probably the most important thing
students can do to prepare to become an architect
is to get out of the building.
Go to other buildings.
Be part of other programs.
Take classes that are sort of outside
of the core architecture classes.
Have friends outside of the architecture building.
I think the architecture program
can tend to be insular because of the studio environment
and the long hours, so just really creating some space
to sort of break out of that cycle a little bit
so you can become a whole person
and be able to carry on a conversation
about a lot of different topics with people.
I think the things that are the most important
for what I do is just to have the right attitude,
because what we do is so much about
listening and trying to understand
what it is the client needs and what the problems are
and being able to take a step back
from your preconceptions of the way you think it needs to be
to look for other alternative solutions.
Those are really critical.
Those kind of soft skills are probably more important
than the technical skills.
Now, of course, we do everything, we use Revit,
we use Photoshop, we use all the sort of
standard business/office software platforms.
We build animations, we build websites,
we do kind of the whole gamut of technical pieces,
but at the end of the day,
if you don't know how to ask a good question,
if you don't know how to listen for
maybe an unsaid answer or an unspoken idea,
that's where the real magic happens in architecture.