 Hi everyone, my name is Jason Klein. I'm the director of P20 initiatives at Northern Illinois University. Welcome back for another episode of Career Pathways Virtual Trail Heads. In this series, we're giving students throughout Illinois and around the world opportunities to engage in work-based learning experiences even though we can't be out job shadowing or interviewing professionals or doing internships because we're learning at home and sheltering in place. So we're excited to bring people to you from a wide variety of occupations so they can share those experiences connected to both what you're learning in class and the kinds of skills you need to be college and career ready. Today, we've got a great, great interview for you. We're really excited to bring you an architect, one of those really high-profile jobs that is very involved in all kinds of details that most of us that aren't architects don't know about. So we're gonna turn it over to our architect Lisa. Do you wanna go ahead and introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Lisa Sharp. I'm the owner of Sharp Architects Incorporated in DeKalb, Illinois, and we're a small architecture firm out here in the Western suburbs. So Lisa, tell us about how you got involved, how you got interest in architecture and then kind of your pathway to becoming an architect. Sure. For some reason, I really don't know why but I've always wanted to be an architect since I was very young. So you can look back on my like Dr. Seuss, what I wanna be when I grow up, fill in the blank thing. And it says at age six, I wanted to be an architect. And apparently sometimes I can be tenacious and stick with things. So I always loved to draw. I was good at math and I liked being with people. So it seemed like it was a good fit. So after high school, I had to go and get my bachelor's degree in architecture and then a master's degree after that. So it took several years to get through college and grad school. I had some opportunities to try working for firms along the way too, which helped confirm I'd made the right decision. So that's kind of how I got going there. So tell us about what a kind of typical day or week, whichever makes the most sense looks like for you. What are those things you regularly do as an architect? So actually one of the things I love about architecture now, and I probably didn't realize this when I wanted to be an architect was that every week's different. And it really depends on where your projects are in the process. There are some weeks and months where you may spend all of your time drawing and working on the computer, preparing drawings for a project. And then like right now, I have three projects under construction. So I'm spending all of my time visiting sites, talking with the owners, talking with contractors and doing all the kind of the administrative things. So it can be very different over the course of a month or a whole year for sure. So that's a wildly different set of skills at least in my head of what you would need to sit there and construct a building on a computer that's gonna stand up and do what it's supposed to and look beautiful. And then to go out into the field where the building's actually being constructed or the project's being constructed and interact with all those different kinds of people doing different kinds of work. Tell us about what skills are like most critical in your work or in those different parts of your work. All right. So I would probably say communications probably the biggest skill that you do have to have. Although there are times when I like to go in my hidey hole and just work on one thing. The fact is the architect is often kind of the conductor of the band. We don't know everything about the project but we have lots of smart people that we bring to the project and smart people that we work with. And we have to make sure that everybody is talking to each other and communicating what the owners needs are, what the contractors needs are, what the contractors may be facing difficulties and things. So you're always kind of going back and forth trying to work things out and keep everybody in touch with each other that should be talking to each other. So who are some of those smart people that you mentioned that you rely on as part of the workflow of doing a project? Right. So when I get approached for a project, it can be a house all the way up to million dollar projects where you've got to find the right consultants needed for each of those projects. So on the bigger projects, well almost all the commercial projects I'd have like a mechanical electrical plumbing engineer. That's usually one firm that's providing that. There's often a civil engineer if there's any site development. If we're doing parking lots or changing anything outside of the building, there's a civil engineer. They have a surveyor usually attached with their organization. We have landscape architects. I've worked with sound accusations. I've worked with kitchen, commercial kitchen designers, residential kitchen designers. So it's, you know, I have a very small firm where two people, two and a half, but we're always bringing in the right team members for that project. So I kind of create a custom team for any given project. Can you tell us about the most interesting project that you've worked on? Probably actually right now, and it's probably my most interesting ever. We are about, I'd say 70% complete with the addition and renovation of the historic Egyptian theater here in DeKalb. It was built in 1929, if I've got my numbers correct. They just had their 90th anniversary and it's been a learning experience every single day. So always drawing more, trying to adjust to what you find inside an old building and getting to have a lot of fun with Egyptian revival detailing and plaster and crazy things that I'll never ever get to do again. So we're enjoying this one a lot right now. That's very cool. I mean, that's a real landmark in DeKalb and what a neat project. Very different from constructing something brand new too. Absolutely. I will say after this one, I'd take a really nice clean brand new building for a while. This one's been very complex, but... I'm sure. So what is something you do in your job that might surprise those of us who are not architects and don't know really the ins and outs of what an architect does on a regular basis? So one of the things I think people don't understand about architects, they always think it's Frank Lloyd Wright and you're just doing Google houses all the time or something, but there's certainly a lot. The fun part are always the design issues and we love doing that part, but there's also a lot of details you have to work out. Somebody has to decide what kind of flooring we're putting in there, what kind of insulation are we doing? Are we gonna try to, you know, what are the energy conservation efforts we're going to go to? So there's all these details from top to bottom that essentially the architect is responsible for. So a lot of people just don't realize how much goes into that and that process and understanding or at least trying your best to understand the construction process so that you don't draw something that a contractor can't build. So tell us about the types of skills in general. I know at the beginning of this conversation, you talked about being tenacious, so I wouldn't be surprised if something along those lines comes back up again, but what are the skills that are most important to have or that have been most important for you to have to be successful in your career as an architect? I think you do have to have imagination and forethought. You need to be able to, you know, consider things that might be needed in the future and things that might go wrong in the future and try to plan for those so that that building can be as successful for that owner as possible. You also need to be able, sometimes you have owners who they have a thought about what they need. Some owners don't take other stakeholders into consideration. They're not maybe thinking as much about the staff's needs or maybe the client's needs. And so you have to kind of ask the right questions of your owners too to make sure that all of the stakeholders answers, you know, get answered and in the long term that'll make a more successful project. So that's always something to keep in mind is watching out for those other stakeholders. I, you know, I got into this because I love drawing and I still do, but the reality is, it's 98% on the computer at this point. So you definitely want to love working on the computer. Luckily, I love that too. Most kids would, but I'd still keep drawing. If you're like drawing and sketching and that type of thing, keep doing it because the other thing that I start to date myself here a little bit, but one of the things we find out is that young people who've always been on the computers don't understand sometimes how to graphically communicate which is the way that older generations did. So hand sketching is still important to teaching you how to communicate graphically what your ideas are. So I love to see some hand drawn things when somebody comes in with a portfolio. So when you start a project, do you start if I hand sketching something? Yeah, almost always. Those sketches may, you know, one of the things sometimes if you lead off with all computer generated drawings to a client, sometimes it feels like you've, oh my gosh, you're done. You've completed it. This is a finished product. Sometimes it can freak them out. So sometimes even if I've constructed something on the computer, it may not get presented in computer format to the client. I may clean up and just sketch back over it sort of thing or sketch a few ideas off of something I've built on the computer. So you have to be careful with that. Like I said, sometimes you just, the client thinks you're done and they're like, no, no, no, no. We still have a lot to talk about, you know. Right, Nick. It's into all those questions that you wanna ask the client, the owners of the building to make sure they're thinking things through and that you build the best product. So in all of our jobs, there's those hidden things or those things that people don't really like doing frequently in the job. What is an example of that for an architect? Cause we really wanna present to, I mean it was great a couple of episodes ago we had an attorney on and he kept saying over and over it's not what it looks like on TV. And so we really wanna make sure that as students are considering careers, they know that part of being in the world of work is there are these things that may not be as much fun or may not be as glamorous, but sometimes there can be strong satisfaction to still checking those things off and getting them done. But what are those things in your life or in the life of architects? So there's a couple of those. You know, when it comes to construction documents, we all think, okay, the architects doing these grand schemes and you come up with these great ideas and, but the reality is you also have to draw what every single wall looks like in the toilet rooms. Those aren't much fun. Nobody wants to do toilet room elevations or enlarged plans of toilet rooms again or stairs. Those are stairs and toilet rooms seem to be one that the younger draft people end up getting stuck with. Later during the construction process, we have, there's a process called construction submittals. We're basically, the contractor says, okay, yes, I'm going to, we're planning on putting in, trying to think this particular tile. And we're gonna use this grout and we're gonna use this trim. That's what you wanted, right? And then you have to go through, take a look at all that product literature and say, nope, you've got the wrong grout, you're using, or you've got it right. And so there's this kind of paperwork process. That's not one of my favorite things. Well, and those are really interesting to hear because as a school district administrator, I've been on the client end of those conversations. And oftentimes where I'm the one on a daily basis interacting with the contractor because we're both on site and also interacting with our architect on more or less a daily basis because we had such a strong relationship. And so yeah, having the architect really help own that is very, very helpful. And I could see how that might not be the most glamorous part of the architect's day. Whereas as to the client, like that's the tile we're gonna live with for probably 20, maybe 40 years in the institutional environment. And I wanna make sure it's right. Well, and it's certainly, it's an important part of the process because you do catch errors both on the contractor's part and on the architect's part, we're like, oh wait a second, I forgot about this consideration. And so sometimes there's some adjustment that has to be made at that point. So it has to be done. So somebody's gotta do it. So you sat at the beginning and now you've just illustrated in these examples. Well, there is that quiet time working on computers. There's quite a bit of working with people. Absolutely, absolutely. You're working with the consultants, you're working with all sorts of owners and contractors. So I love being able to interact with people with all sorts of skill sets and it keeps it, keeps it happen. And how do you manage kind of that collaboration, the potential for conflict with all those different people in those relationships? Cause that's part of your role in the process, isn't it? Absolutely. Well, it's a process and you have to be at least a personable enough person to make that work. If you do not like interacting with people, you may want to consider more of a draftsman role rather than the architect role that will limit the number of people you have to interact with. But I still like people. So I'll stick with the side of the coin. Awesome. So kind of two last questions. First of all, how does your job have a positive impact on the world in your mind? You know, architecture has the ability, it shapes the environment we live in, the environment we work in. You have some clients who have very modest goals in that they just want to open up their little shop and you have others who want to create community icons. So you try to make the most out of all of those opportunities and hopefully you're creating a place where people can have fabulous businesses that are successful and become a community icon and become part of the fabric around you. So that's what I like the best when that happens. And then when you think about talking to a 12-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old, or a 20-year-old who might be watching this, regardless of whether they become an architecture or an engineer or some totally unrelated career occupation, what advice would you give them as they're thinking about careers at this point in their lives? I would, well, first off, that's a broad question there. I love my job. I love working on it. And I'm lucky in that way. There are a lot of people who have jobs they don't like very much. For me, because I like it, it's less like work, you know? So sometimes it will take a few jobs that maybe you don't like to get to that job you do like. I would say keep trying to involve something that interests you and what you decide to do. Have some component that it makes you feel good about what you're working on so that you just feel good about yourself. That's great advice. It definitely feels less like work. When we really, really like what we're doing. Isn't that the case? Absolutely. Well, this has been really, really interesting and knowing the range of work that you've done, including the project on the Egyptian Theater, which is such a landmark in DeKalb, feel very lucky to have had you on as a guest. So thank you so much, Lisa. Thanks for everything. For those of you watching, if you have questions, ideas for occupations you'd like to see featured or specific people that you think would make a great guest, you can get in touch with us on Twitter. Our account is at P20P20Network, all one word at P20Network on Twitter. And so let us know what you think, what your comments, what your questions are there. And we look forward to bringing you more episodes of Career Pathways Virtual Trailheads to have work-based learning continue even while we're learning at home. Thanks again, Lisa. Thanks for having me.