What are the most interesting aspects about your job?

For me, the most exciting aspect of my job as an architect is finding myself as an arbiter standing at the intersection of a variety of complex, interdependent forces, and negotiating between them to resolve contradictions and find solutions. Architects are neither engineers nor artists, but architecture is a combination of rationality and aesthetics between which we are the mediator. For every decision we make, we have to use rationality to solve problems brought to us by both context and client alike, while creating aesthetically pleasing spatial experiences. We have to constantly balance between visionary ideals and technological reality to create buildable, aesthetic structures. We also have to consider human input, from a multitude of stakeholders and consulting teams, all of whose opinions and directions must be considered and properly assessed, not only in accordance with their technical knowledge, but through a multitude of filters. We are the central processing unit that takes in vast amounts of information, analyzes it, recombines it, and then produces the final set of decisions that goes on to become physical reality. And that’s really exciting.

Do you think women are treated equally in competing for leadership positions in the industry?

There’s no way around it – architecture is a deeply male dominated field. However, I do not believe these structures are as deeply entrenched as they are in many other industries, and I believe there is a fundamental shift underway within architecture towards gender equality. Or at least I hope so. It’s always exciting to see a female leader because the total number is still quite small. From what I’ve observed, women in this industry are not always given the same opportunities as men, especially early on in their careers. Some companies go as far as making explicit that they do not hire female graduates. Far more often than we would like to believe, women are also pre-judged by their age and marital status, or whether they have kids. Then when it comes to competing for moving up a level, women usually need to be more capable than men to be able to get a promotion. Luckily, this industry values experience which comes with age, so I do see an increasing number of female leaders in their 40s who are as strong as their male counterparts. But unfortunately, younger mid-level leadership roles still tend to be disproportionately filled by men.