An interview with my younger self.
I thought it might be interesting to have my current 70-year-old self, interview my past 25- year-old self. In going through this exercise, I hope to reveal my experiences as an architect to the up-and-coming young men and women in this profession. The 25-year-old me has just graduated with a Master of Architecture (M. ARCH) from the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA).
Terry Cunningham, at the Kimbell Art Museum 2023
Terry Cunningham, 1979
TRC – 2024
Congratulations! So, now that you have your Master of Architecture, what do you think your next move will be?
TRC – 2024
So, you finally landed a real architectural intern job. What is your first impression of the firm that hired you?
TRC – 2024
What sort of projects and tasks do the leaders in the firm have you working on so far?
TRC – 2024
Are you learning any practical knowledge or is it just drawing “toilet room door swings and details” ?
TRC – 2024
Are the projects you are working on giving your architectural creative skills a chance to be utilized?
TRC – 2024
What does the average day at the firm’s office look like for you?
TRC – 2024
Is there any task that you have been required to do that you felt was a large burden?
TRC – 2024
Have you ever had the opportunity to meet with a client of the firm?
TRC – 2024
What sort of new technology have you seen being used by the firm?
TRC – 2024
Do you ever get involved with the city staff on planning code or building code issues?
TRC – 2024
How long before you can take the State of Texas Architect registration examination?
TRC – 2024
Thank you so much for your time and answers. I think you will do just fine on the ARE and have a long successful career as an architect.
TRC – 1979
Part of the requirements of the M. ARCH was that I work in an architecture firm for about 100 hours. This is called the “Practicum” course. I essentially had to find a part time job at a firm. The firm I found has been good to me, so I am going to continue to be a full-time intern there. It is a small firm with only 15 people in total in two office locations. The Hurst office is only about a 20-minute drive from my apartment in north Arlington.
TRC – 1979
The people in the firm are very friendly and easy to work for. As I said there are about 8 people in my office with about 7 in the west Texas office. The staff makeup of our office is 1 principal, 3 registered architects, 3 interns and 1 administrative person. With a staff composition like this I get plenty of hands-on design, detailing, artistic and technical experience. I am very happy so far.
TRC – 1979
The projects are greatly varied in their type and scope of work. My favorite is a large country club building in a city in west Texas. I completed about 70% of the plans drafting on it. We have also done some large retail centers and office buildings. My least favorite are the federal government projects. These are usually boring. I completed one by myself with the assistance of one of the architects. That project was a roof replacement for a maintenance building in Fort Worth. This is not the kind of project I hoped to be designing after university graduation.
TRC – 1979
As I mentioned, the small firm is a good way to go if you want a great variety of work experiences. I do perform a lot of drafting for construction plan sets. All the plans are drawn on modern state-of-the-art drafting boards with parallel bars. I also do some color rendering work by hand, which I enjoy very much. On the rare occasion we need to make a site visit, the project architects have taken me out to job sites. One time we even flew to Killeen, Texas to look at a job site.
TRC – 1979
Yes. The project-architect on the large country club let me design a lot of floor plans and elevations. On another project, which was a small Convention Center in west Texas, I was able to do some large color elevation presentation boards. We then used high quality photography to take images of these for use in a marketing campaign for the project.
TRC – 1979
It is pretty much an 8 am to 5 pm kind of day. There is a small amount of overtime but not a lot. We largely work at our drafting tables all day on construction plans. We also do some color presentation type work for several hours each week. On a rare occasion we go out to job sites or have a meeting with a consulting engineer.
TRC – 1979
I am afraid so. The client for the country club buildings decided we had to reduce the size of the building by about 10 % in total. To accomplish this and keep the same character of the floorplan and elevations, we had to reduce the length and width of the building in small increments. That required me to make a LOT of erasures and move overs in the plans. This was very tiresome and labor intensive.
TRC – 1979
Not very often. I have sat in some meetings on a few occasions with a few of the clients. The main interaction with clients is usually reserved for the principals and project architects.
TRC – 1979
The administrative assistant is using a new electric typewriter that has a data memory in it. She can type several pages of specifications into the memory so she only types those pages a single time. However, it has some limitations. We still must hand type some things and cut and paste our final specification manual originals.
TRC – 1979
In graduate school, the professors would tell us about city planning code and building code requirements, so I am a little familiar with them. However, I never really have to investigate the building code requirements. Frankley, I have never heard one of the project architects even mention the building code. I assume they are taking care of it in their design. I have never heard them talk about meeting any planning code requirements. Besides, the cities never have any building design planning requirements anyways. They leave it up to the architects.
TRC – 1979
The requirements to take the ARE (Architectural Registration Exam) are that you have a 5-year or
6-year degree. My M. ARCH counts as a 6-year degree. In addition to that I will need a minimum of 24 months or 2 full years working as an intern under a registered architect. Right now, I need about another 22 months of internship. So, I expect to take it in 1982 sometime. I will have to go to Austin for a couple of days to get that all done.
Randy Carrol Landers
Terry – this was so interesting. I graduated from UTA with a four year degree in ’77 so we were there at the same time. My experience was different as I went to work on the construction side while still in school. There were many parallels and contrasts to our paths.