Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I vividly remember striding into an architecture school in Santa Monica, California - an old LSD factory converted into an architecture school by an avant-garde group of faculty and students from the Department of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona "who wanted to approach the subject from a more experimental perspective than traditional schools offered". "Are you sure THIS is the school?" said my bemused father, whose idea of a university was Oxford, and who with every step he took inside this strange "school" was plotting how he was going to extract me the hell out of there!
Somehow, I won that battle, and so began an intensive 5-year education to becoming an architect. My recollection of the first two years of architecture school was something akin to brainwashing. It seemed to be a concerted effort to rewire my brain, to think outside the box, with the right side of my brain, upside down, right-side up, inside out, picking apart and questioning long-established norms and limitations. It was a brutal and unnerving, but enlightening experience. Imagine defending a charcoal drawing expressing how a slice of lime felt as you bit into it to an audience of your peers and instructors!
My intake batch of about 30 kindred spirits was soon whittled down to about 12, and we emerged into the world of the vertical studios of the third, fourth, and fifth years liberated from the constraints we had entered the school with, and would no doubt return to. Within the walls of the school, I was free to push the boundaries and design without much regard for practical matters such as how my designs were going to stand up, how much they would cost, or whether they could secure a building permit. It mystifies me how I managed to complete the design studios while simultaneously studying structural engineering, professional practice, contract administration, history, and all manner of design theories. I apparently absorbed the two strains of architectural education - the art part and the science part - with the respective sides of my brain, careful to keep the two sides from contaminating each other! More than education in design, I always felt it was an education in unlearning, questioning, and relearning.
My blissfully cocooned life in school soon came to an end, and confident in my mastery of design, I marched into the world of work. Happily, for me, I was recruited by one of the instructors in the school, an esteemed, emerging, up-and-coming architect. I had made it! I imagined being seated on his right side, designing cutting-edge, impossibly radical buildings. Instead, on day one of my new job, I had to swallow the bitter pill of reality when I was shown to a smallish table, practically by the rear entrance of the office. I spent the first few weeks of my work life running errands, making blueprints, and ordering office supplies! So began my hands-on education on how an architecture office worked in the real world. No shortcuts, I had to start at the bottom and work my way up. It turned out to be a brilliant experience - but just as I was hitting my stride, fate called me home to Belize.
In Belize, the real world crashed in on me. Gone was the world of mythical, benefactor clients, emerging starchitects, publications, gallery exhibits, and pushing the limits; instead, I had crash-landed into the world of deadlines, clients with restricted budgets and even more restricted imaginations; bosses with no interest in pushing any limits other than how fast I could complete a project; and contractors with limited skills and limited access to construction equipment and building materials. This was the birth of my love/hate relationship with architecture. A relationship that led me on several occasions to give up practicing architecture altogether and pursue an entirely different profession - even an MBA. But architecture always called me back, and now, 28 years later, I’ve made a strange peace with it.
“If you want an easy life, don't be an architect!” opined Zaha Hadid - words that have rung true in my life. Over these years I’ve had to unlearn, question, and relearn in order to come to terms with how I would practice architecture in Belize. For me, architecture is the built expression of problems solved, needs that were addressed, and constraints that were overcome. I now embrace the challenges of limited budgets and crazy deadlines. I have found ways to work around material and technological constraints. I've taken the opportunity to let go of the ideas and notions about forms and styles from a world I no longer inhabit and allow myself to come up with different solutions that are reflective of the environment and people I serve. I realize now that this was the gift of my architecture education all those many years ago – a core belief in myself, rigor of thought and discipline, an open mind, and the flexibility to adapt.
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