I THOUGHT YOU WERE AN ARCHITECT? WHAT'S ALL THIS IT STUFF?
I began Front Step Design in 2005 as an architect. A brand new architect, still working in traditional ways: I had clients of my own, I worked as an employee of a small firm that only did architecture, and I worked as a design employee of a design-build construction and development company.
All but one of those entities are dead now.
I finished architecture school with 6 years of idealism, fresh from a heady delusion of "physical improvement can save the world!" We really said that.
Now I see that "physical improvement is a visible symptom of systemic improvement. Just as the more organized, purposeful mind lives in a house that reflects its inner organization and purpose, the organization of only physical space won't produce the inner serenity of mind, without that interior work being done.
I asked myself (and it took a year!) what is it that I am, what do I do well, and how can that fit into the 'new economy'? I confronted the fact that these construction and development jobs aren't coming back, because we did more than was needed, the inventory is overstocked, and all that worrying about physical space may be outmoded by the time the space finds tenants.
I've been interested in how business works since reading The E-Myth Revisited in 2002, tending to create databases since I understood how to use Excel, and I so love thinking about organization that I used to re-arrange my room every month as a child. Systems analysis and information architecture didn't hit my radar until the traditional architects started whining about their title not being adequately protected. My mother returned to library work as a digital medical librarian, and we compared notes about the similarity of our work, on a meta-level. I kept trying to pick her brain about databases I wanted to use without really having the education to have a meaningful conversation.
So this blog is now about data architecture. I imagine a bit of the built environment will still creep in - it's hard to shut the door on the last eighteen years entirely. I'll be blogging what I'm reading and experimenting with; that was hard to do with architecture, since each project belonged more to its client than to me. I'll be posting intermittent palate-cleansers - I like to paint and cook and make things.
More FAQs as they pop up!
