 A lot of a lot of my fellow architects go around saying things like school doesn't prepare you for the real world It doesn't prepare you for professional practice and it's which I say well, that's you know That's fine. What school teaches you how to do is how to think and a Framework within which you can get excited about architecture and if school has done that well That's what it needs to be doing You know, we can teach people how to present projects. We can teach people how to Do the AutoCAD programs and do the project management and all that you're going to learn it better in a professional situation anyway What what you need in school is to develop that spark that caused you to become an architect in the first place And wherever that spark leads you whatever whatever road of design that it takes you down and then You you flesh that out as as you start your practice You know like most students I thought I would Get out of school go work for a large firm for about six months and they go start my own firm and and do that and It didn't quite work out that way Ended up Spending 15 years at the first firm I was with and spent the last 15 years here both very very large firms and One of the things that I think most people coming out of school don't understand is the reason you go to work for a Firm is not the same reason that you stay at a firm you go for one whole set of reasons you stay for a different set of reasons You can't quite know yet and You know it because it feels good because you like the camaraderie of a studio situation Because you like the issues that the firm is dealing with or the resources that the firm has or that you hate all those things And you want to try something else and you can't quite know that You know you think you know everything as you prepare for an interview and and all that and people on both sides of the Table don't really know whether it's going to work out And you have to understand that there's sort of a feeling things feeling everything out period and hopefully if it's a terrific firm that you're with and you've got Talents that you find that right mesh the large-scale practice For me one of the most exciting things about it is That there are a whole series of individuals that can be attracted to that each of which have particular expertise Not everyone has to be a generalist. You don't have to be equally good at all things But if you have an area or two that you're particularly good at You can excel in that and and work with a team of people who Have complimentary talents You know I'm fond of telling people that the world is a much drier place because I have nothing to do with waterproofing You know, I wouldn't be any good at that It's not what interests me but I am thrilled that there are people who wake up in the morning and Flashing is on their mind. They worry about that detail and they worry about how a piece of precast or a piece of stone is Is connected to a building through a rain screen system and in? You know, I'm envious of the fact that that's the way their mind works That's not the way my mind works But I do know that I need to hook up with those people and that's you know That's sort of the the beauty of a large practice is that that you can do that and I've been blessed with you know, working with terrific partners and and Architects that you know have complimentary talents and it's you know the genius of Pooling together a group of people in the very best way Anyway, that's you know, that's not something that's sort of readily obvious Probably the biggest topic and you know, this is not gonna be any surprise is sustainability And and livable cities, you know, we have as a society Managed to mess up this planet and you know, I know that sounds high-falutin or doomsday or whatever, but the reality is There's some really bad stuff in our atmosphere and if you look at just carbon emissions What we do for a living? building buildings running buildings all that is 50% of all the carbon emissions in the United States We could all run out and get a Prius or ride our bicycles all that stuff That's only 17% of the carbon emissions 50% is the buildings Well, that's both sort of dreadful and wonderful at the same time The dreadful part is all this carbon is going in the atmosphere and causing global warming and All of the other things the the opportunity is because it's so concentrated A relatively smaller group of people can do something about it and can focus on it And it's going to take more than architects. It's going to take government and laws and you know, I I believe that it is as Important as life safety You know, we we lived through a time when you didn't have to put sprinklers in buildings and You know people realized that, you know, no one had ever died But you know by 1985 no one had ever died in a building that was Sprinklered and was working properly unless that person had set the fire now I don't know how they found that data, but but that's a pretty staggering thing And so, you know, we passed a bunch of laws that said we're going to sprinkler our buildings You know the Chicago fire great Chicago fire led rise to our fire codes 20 30 years later the San Francisco earthquake Led rise, you know we as Americans. We love our disasters our disasters sort of lead us Into lots of the hurricane Katrina For me was that disaster hurricane Katrina was a predictable event. In fact, it was predicted and You know other Katrina's are going to occur as water level rises and so forth You know, and that's just one piece of what we're doing to the environment. So I really think sustainability is absolutely in the forefront