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We recently had a high school senior in our office.  He’s planning on a career in architecture.  A friend of ours works as a counselor in the local high school and recommend this young man come talk to us and possibly “job shadow” to see what it’s like in a “real” architect’s office.

He had participated in our alma mater’s summer architecture “discovery” program at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.  I think he learned some new things, particularly how an architecture program might run. He’s still waiting to hear from the school to find out if he’s been accepted.

We had a discussion…   A good discussion.  We talked theory.  We talked practice.  We talked about school.  We talked about the academy vs. reality.  We told war stories of project reviews and clueless professors.  We didn’t get much work done…directly.

But what it did do was sort of reinvigorate us.  We got a bit more excited.  A bit more enthused about our work.  In the day-to-day of running a business (and make no mistake, an architecture practice is a business.  Taxes, bills, invoices, employees, salesmen, phone calls…) it’s nice to remember why we got into what we do.  We can be passionate about it.

And that’s the value of the discussion.  It reignites our passion…  We’re excited to go to work again, even it’s just reviewing submittals.  When we first started working, we used to regularly sit in our bosses office and talk about Architecture.  It’s what kept is interested and excited.  In school we always talked about it…even if we disagreed with them.  Before I merged my firm with my partner’s firm, I would sit alone and do my work.  It was lonely.  And sometimes I wondered why I was doing what I was doing.  Having a partner to bounce ideas off of is great.  But, in the past few years together, I think we sometimes forget the value of the discussion.  The value of talking about these things to help us stay motivated.

We need to remember to take a break from the mundane work and talk about the architecture that excites us.  It’ll make for better projects for our clients–better architecture.  And therein lies the value of discussion.