How did you find your way into the field of architecture? What comes to your mind, when you think back at your time studying/learning about architecture?

Architecture as a profession was introduced to me at a very young age. I was mentored by a handful of dedicated teachers. At 10, I was creating paper models and working with wood as an apprentice to a practicing architect artist because my school offered apprenticeships and I chose architecture. She spoke about composition while we worked with our hands. Fast forward to 13, I joined a mostly-male woodshop class where the teacher taught us how to draw an elevation, plan, and section of a wood block. Fast forward to 15, my school offered an AutoCAD course and I immediately used those technical skills to apply for a part time job at an architectural office in Tucson, Arizona. On my first day, my boss (who had worked for I.M. Pei) asked me to learn Revit immediately, handing me the manual and I thought, “What luck! I’m getting paid to keep learning.” I worked there for two years until I graduated from high school and was accepted to Arizona State University.

When I think back on this time, having a foundation of skills to build upon is what made me always want to be the kind of architect who makes physical buildings. I was learning how change in the built environment happens, through proficient representation and practice, like riser diagrams, demo plans, redlines and bid sets. It took me a long time before I started to think about work that embeds within it something more than nuts and bolts information, something intangible.

The first architecture studio that let me peek behind the veil of the profession was for a mausoleum. It asked: What does it mean to build for the dead? What kind of light, heat, views, and energy aided the grieving human? How will architecture support the most human of rituals? I explored themes of life after death, the sense of connection to previous generations through stories passed down and cultivated memories through objects. At the end of the studio I made a model and many drawings, but in order to ‘model’ or ‘perform’ the part of the design that was about memories in objects, I created a series of paintings and gave them away to the jury.