walking away from Gunnar Birkerts' office
walking away from Gunnar Birkerts' office
After my car accident in January 1966 my life began to change.
Instead of being an architectural student, LIT Student Council President who was working 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year at two over-lapping part-time jobs at WXYZ-TV as a news headline writer and weekend desk editor I was given a part-time job in the evenings doing mechanical drafting
After having taken 8 semesters of mechanical drafting at Osborn High School I thought accepting the mechanical drafting night job would be easy. A good friend of my soon father-in-law had given me the part-time job. Coincidentally the job captain I was reporting to for my nightly work was a draftsman I met when I worked two Summers at Whitehead & Kales in River Rouge, Michigan as a blueprint boy and junior draftsman. He was welcoming and trusting. Working alone was not an issue because most of the time for two years at WXYZ-TV I worked alone and during some of my other part-time jobs I had worked alone most of the time.
That night job turned into a NIGHTMARE.
I did not really know what I was actually doing on the drawings
My 8 semesters had exposed me to mechanical drafting but I learned very little about what I was actually drawing. Within a month I was LET GO, politely, but still LET GO.
Then my first architectural dream happened.
Another architectural student who knew about my work situation approached me one day saying:
Would you like a part-time job working in an architectural firm where I work part-time.
A GIFT.
Leonard G. Siegal, AIA was located on Fort Street in southern Detroit. It was not a long drive so I took it.
There were 4 of us in the drafting room and Leonard was the owner and the licensed architect who did all the design.
The first week I had another nightmare when I realized that I had learned next to nothing technical while taking the 2 quarters of architectural drafting at LIT from the Dean.
How did I know?
My first attempt at drawing a walk section was wrong because I didn't know basics:
1. the size of a brick
2. the size of 2 x lumber
Such basics I had failed to learn or was not ever taught.
Once again I had gotten As because I could make PRETTY DRAWINGS.
PRETTY DRAWINGS do not help contractors build our buildings.
The worse NIGHTMARE began to happen in May in 1966. That is when Leonard gook on a junior partner, a name I will not share to protect against any unnecessary law suits.
I didn't care for "X" from the beginning. His arrogant, know-it-all attitude. His "I'm the boss, you are the lowly draftsman attitude. Add to that his sexist, gross things he would say when woman walked by our office windows outside on Fort Street.
The Nightmare when "X" threatened to fire me because of so many errors on some of drafting work and my apparent "I don't care attitude in June.
Magically I turned my attitude around in the next week and improved my accuracy.
July 4th weekend I called in sick and took an extra day off.
During that I day I packed up some examples of my work and went looking for jobs closure to where my new wife and I were living then.
The very first firm I interviewed at offered me a higher wage and I accepted it. It was a DREAM. Not a DREAM JOB but better than my NIGHTMARE JOB had become during the past 5 months.
The next week I quick Leonard's firm. I regretted quitting Leonard and walking away from my very first architectural job captain, Bob Bodnar, who I would realize over the next two years had been an excellent teacher.
About a year and half later my work at the 2nd firm became mostly boring though it paid okay.
Eventually my boredom of "designing" (poor use of the term) of grocery stores, discount stores, factory buildings and extreme boredom doing drafting for the same buildings.
Once again my drafting was beautiful but I resisted learning what I was really drawing. The two job captains I reported to were night and day. One arrogant know-it-all from Windsor with an "I am ENGLISH attitude and accent and the other very helpful and a good teacher.
But I had wanted out months before I was finally laid off.
Within a week I had landed what might be a DREAM JOB working with Earl Confer, AIA, the church architect who designed the church my wife, our children, and her extended family all attended, often but not all Sundays.
Mr. Confer treated me with respect and let me design the church work in the office and to build models, a set of skills I had been developing since I was 11 or 12.
It was great for a few months. I was going to school at WSU at night and weekends and playing architect 8 to 5 Monday to Friday.
The office had Mr. Confer, his long time secreatary, senior level draftsman and a UofM graduate who thought he was a PROJECT ARCHITECT with a ego as big as Lake Michigan.
Within months one of the other architects I interviewed with earlier contacted me about doing moonlight work and I accepted the second job.
Slowly the human dynamics day to day at Confer's firm became annoying.
Guess what?
I quit and took a full-time job with Ferruccio P. Conti, AIA a Czech/Italian Architect with a heart of gold.
Ferruccio's firm consisted of himself, Don, a UofM graduate who was working towards becoming a licensed architect who was a very nice guy that helped me learn a great deal and me a college grad junior architect who had already had 3 jobs in less than 2 years already.
There were no windows in the drafting room at Ferruccio's office as there had been in the other previous 3 offices. The second was actually a beautifully designed office.
Within less than a year Ferruccio ran out of work and said he would have to let me go. Still have the nice testimonial letter he gave me.
Back to the streets of Detroit, Birmingham and Southfield looking for my my 5th job since March 1966. It only took me a week to land a full-time job and a part-time night job.
The day-time full-time job was an IDEAL DREAM JOB. It was working WITH Gunnar Birkerts and Associates. I had heard him speak at an AIA Student meeting at LIT a couple years ago and had been studying his work in magazines and his completed buildings around the Detroit Metro area.
I had found a job with a GREAT ARCHITECT, a pure DREAM JOB. I started working at GBA in March of 1968. The projects I worked on all ended up published in most to every architectural magazines of journals around the globe.
I felt intimidate by most of the other employees, especially the designers at first plus I was going to school at night and doing moonlight work at an Design House interior design firm and doing freelance party theme work for some restaurants and didn't go out to lunch with other employees. Instead I would hangout in the conference room each lunchtime.
One day I have remembered over 50 years I walked in to read and eat my lunch and there in consistent, uniform matching piles of promotional packages addressed to 30+ architectural magazines from around the world. The were promo packages for the Federal Reserve Bank Building we were working on for Minneapolis. I worked on the design development drawings, then the interiors over much of my first year before I was moved to the IBM building project for Sterling Forest, NY which would also receive a great deal of professional recognition.
I easily could write a book about my time from March 1968 to January 1970 working on pure architectural award winning projects.
It was like going to graduate school and getting paid for it.
Then in January 1970 my married life was turning into a nightmare.
Easily explaining that time in my life could take chapters to describe the nightmares over the months to come.
The first Monday morning in January 1970 I packed up a portfoilo of my graphic design work and moonlight advertising work and graphic projects from my various Wayne State University Art Degree coursework and started looking for a job in advertising or graphic design
Oh so naive I was then.
Two days later I called the office to set up a lunch meeting with Jack Hilberry, Gunnar's long time friends and partner who had given me my IDEAL DREAM JOB in March of 1968.
I packed up egg sandwiches and fruit for the two and met with him on a wood dock in Walnut Lake. One of the beautiful places in Birmingham I had often eaten my lunch and did studying for my art degree courses. Coincidentally we were sitting across from the house where Robin Williams grea up before his family moved to California.
I walked away from the most potentially IDEAL DREAM JOB I might ever have in my life as a coal miner turned engineer's son.
After my car accident in January 1966 my life began to change.
Instead of being an architectural student, LIT Student Council President who was working 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year at two over-lapping part-time jobs at WXYZ-TV as a news headline writer and weekend desk editor I was given a part-time job in the evenings doing mechanical drafting
After having taken 8 semesters of mechanical drafting at Osborn High School I thought accepting the mechanical drafting night job would be easy. A good friend of my soon father-in-law had given me the part-time job. Coincidentally the job captain I was reporting to for my nightly work was a draftsman I met when I worked two Summers at Whitehead & Kales in River Rouge, Michigan as a blueprint boy and junior draftsman. He was welcoming and trusting. Working alone was not an issue because most of the time for two years at WXYZ-TV I worked alone and during some of my other part-time jobs I had worked alone most of the time.
That night job turned into a NIGHTMARE.
I did not really know what I was actually doing on the drawings
My 8 semesters had exposed me to mechanical drafting but I learned very little about what I was actually drawing. Within a month I was LET GO, politely, but still LET GO.
Then my first architectural dream happened.
Another architectural student who knew about my work situation approached me one day saying:
Would you like a part-time job working in an architectural firm where I work part-time.
A GIFT.
Leonard G. Siegal, AIA was located on Fort Street in southern Detroit. It was not a long drive so I took it.
There were 4 of us in the drafting room and Leonard was the owner and the licensed architect who did all the design.
The first week I had another nightmare when I realized that I had learned next to nothing technical while taking the 2 quarters of architectural drafting at LIT from the Dean.
How did I know?
My first attempt at drawing a walk section was wrong because I didn't know basics:
1. the size of a brick
2. the size of 2 x lumber
Such basics I had failed to learn or was not ever taught.
Once again I had gotten As because I could make PRETTY DRAWINGS.
PRETTY DRAWINGS do not help contractors build our buildings.
The worse NIGHTMARE began to happen in May in 1966. That is when Leonard gook on a junior partner, a name I will not share to protect against any unnecessary law suits.
I didn't care for "X" from the beginning. His arrogant, know-it-all attitude. His "I'm the boss, you are the lowly draftsman attitude. Add to that his sexist, gross things he would say when woman walked by our office windows outside on Fort Street.
The Nightmare when "X" threatened to fire me because of so many errors on some of drafting work and my apparent "I don't care attitude in June.
Magically I turned my attitude around in the next week and improved my accuracy.
July 4th weekend I called in sick and took an extra day off.
During that I day I packed up some examples of my work and went looking for jobs closure to where my new wife and I were living then.
The very first firm I interviewed at offered me a higher wage and I accepted it. It was a DREAM. Not a DREAM JOB but better than my NIGHTMARE JOB had become during the past 5 months.
The next week I quick Leonard's firm. I regretted quitting Leonard and walking away from my very first architectural job captain, Bob Bodnar, who I would realize over the next two years had been an excellent teacher.
About a year and half later my work at the 2nd firm became mostly boring though it paid okay.
Eventually my boredom of "designing" (poor use of the term) of grocery stores, discount stores, factory buildings and extreme boredom doing drafting for the same buildings.
Once again my drafting was beautiful but I resisted learning what I was really drawing. The two job captains I reported to were night and day. One arrogant know-it-all from Windsor with an "I am ENGLISH attitude and accent and the other very helpful and a good teacher.
But I had wanted out months before I was finally laid off.
Within a week I had landed what might be a DREAM JOB working with Earl Confer, AIA, the church architect who designed the church my wife, our children, and her extended family all attended, often but not all Sundays.
Mr. Confer treated me with respect and let me design the church work in the office and to build models, a set of skills I had been developing since I was 11 or 12.
It was great for a few months. I was going to school at WSU at night and weekends and playing architect 8 to 5 Monday to Friday.
The office had Mr. Confer, his long time secreatary, senior level draftsman and a UofM graduate who thought he was a PROJECT ARCHITECT with a ego as big as Lake Michigan.
Within months one of the other architects I interviewed with earlier contacted me about doing moonlight work and I accepted the second job.
Slowly the human dynamics day to day at Confer's firm became annoying.
Guess what?
I quit and took a full-time job with Ferruccio P. Conti, AIA a Czech/Italian Architect with a heart of gold.
Ferruccio's firm consisted of himself, Don, a UofM graduate who was working towards becoming a licensed architect who was a very nice guy that helped me learn a great deal and me a college grad junior architect who had already had 3 jobs in less than 2 years already.
There were no windows in the drafting room at Ferruccio's office as there had been in the other previous 3 offices. The second was actually a beautifully designed office.
Within less than a year Ferruccio ran out of work and said he would have to let me go. Still have the nice testimonial letter he gave me.
Back to the streets of Detroit, Birmingham and Southfield looking for my my 5th job since March 1966. It only took me a week to land a full-time job and a part-time night job.
The day-time full-time job was an IDEAL DREAM JOB. It was working WITH Gunnar Birkerts and Associates. I had heard him speak at an AIA Student meeting at LIT a couple years ago and had been studying his work in magazines and his completed buildings around the Detroit Metro area.
I had found a job with a GREAT ARCHITECT, a pure DREAM JOB. I started working at GBA in March of 1968. The projects I worked on all ended up published in most to every architectural magazines of journals around the globe.
I felt intimidate by most of the other employees, especially the designers at first plus I was going to school at night and doing moonlight work at an Design House interior design firm and doing freelance party theme work for some restaurants and didn't go out to lunch with other employees. Instead I would hangout in the conference room each lunchtime.
One day I have remembered over 50 years I walked in to read and eat my lunch and there in consistent, uniform matching piles of promotional packages addressed to 30+ architectural magazines from around the world. The were promo packages for the Federal Reserve Bank Building we were working on for Minneapolis. I worked on the design development drawings, then the interiors over much of my first year before I was moved to the IBM building project for Sterling Forest, NY which would also receive a great deal of professional recognition.
I easily could write a book about my time from March 1968 to January 1970 working on pure architectural award winning projects.
It was like going to graduate school and getting paid for it.
Then in January 1970 my married life was turning into a nightmare.
Easily explaining that time in my life could take chapters to describe the nightmares over the months to come.
The first Monday morning in January 1970 I packed up a portfoilo of my graphic design work and moonlight advertising work and graphic projects from my various Wayne State University Art Degree coursework and started looking for a job in advertising or graphic design
Oh so naive I was then.
Two days later I called the office to set up a lunch meeting with Jack Hilberry, Gunnar's long time friends and partner who had given me my IDEAL DREAM JOB in March of 1968.
I packed up egg sandwiches and fruit for the two and met with him on a wood dock in Walnut Lake. One of the beautiful places in Birmingham I had often eaten my lunch and did studying for my art degree courses. Coincidentally we were sitting across from the house where Robin Williams grea up before his family moved to California.
I walked away from the most potentially IDEAL DREAM JOB I might ever have in my life as a coal miner turned engineer's son.
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