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SHELTER JOURNAL

A diary on the practice of thoughtful architecture.

My current home office/studio. Irreverent painting credit: Chris Erickson.

Remote Studio

November 2, 2020
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2 Comments

Land+Shelter has always allowed for remote work, but since March 2020, it’s been happening at a different scale. At first I thought the architecture studio would be lost without pin-up walls and shared office space. But it’s actually been working well, and it’s been eye opening. It got me thinking about an essential HR challenge that we’ve faced over the years: finding local talent. Could remote employees be the answer?

 

I’m drawing the conclusion that folks need to be creative when hiring in this rural, expensive valley. So I made an adjustment to my mindset and recently published an employment advertisement with the option to work remotely – indefinitely. I was skeptical when I placed the ad, and I managed the hiring process with a strong local preference. Even with that bias going into my hiring process, the wealth of talented candidates was a game changer to my thinking.

 

It’s not an obvious choice despite the apparent talent. L+S needs people to be here locally for practical reasons like site visits and field measurements, and esoteric reasons like designing architecture that responds to the meaning of a place. And then there’s just a firm business development question: How can we grow and develop relationships with less boots on the ground locally? The concern that haunts me the most is the idea of a design studio. The studio work environment is a sacrosanct part of architecture. I hold onto the idea that architects pool creative energy in a room and that fires a kind of magic in each one individually, which in turn comes back into the room. Yet now I am an architect saying we can create that energy without the physical space to bound and amplify it. This is either irony or it’s at least irony-adjacent. In hiring nonlocal talent, I’m making room for the idea that shared physical space matters less than I thought.

 

We need local employees in the same way we need people who are incredible at sketching, detailing, mentoring, software, etc. All of these skills and traits make a team and they are rarely possessed by one person. Knowing just how much of a certain trait we need is always tricky. Having added “local” to this mixture of desirable traits, now I’m thinking in terms of percentage of the office that works locally. And the critical question: Can we build in the right amount of collaboration over remote distances if we’re doing it with more and more consciousness?

Here’s my answer: Yes.

2 Comments

on Remote Studio.
  1. James Surls
    November 8, 2020 @ 12:22 pm
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    Reply

    Mr. Albert said, “if you are alone and like it, it is solitude, if you are alone and do not like it, it is loneliness” / I have to have others to make my orbit complete, but the happiest days for me is when I go into the studio and be alone with The Highwomen singing and me looking and listening to my core. Physical production is the process of many, creative thought is the stuff of solitude.

    I do enjoy your thoughts on thought. Tell Chris he may consider tracking dodel bug trails on the bottom side of field stones for a while. Or maybe bathing his face in the morning sun. Or even in “his saviors” name, (remember we all serve somebody) laying his weapons down

  2. Mark Chain
    November 8, 2020 @ 4:56 pm
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    Reply

    Interesting, and I agree with most of what you are saying. The remote world works much better than I originally thought it would. I still think employees should be come to the “local office” at least occasionally to be part of the greater whole, but that does not need to be as often as I once thought necessary. That being said, something is missed from being in the same work environment. Maybe because I have had a home office for years, I am pretty tired of being “socially distanced”. But for people in the general area, i think being remote works fine for most days of the week, and there is noting like a long commute to add stress to the individual and separation to the family. But, when at least the pandemic is over, I think people will crave being in the “work environment/physical space” more often, as bottom line we are social beings. But from an environmental, stress and time/cost factor, is it necessary to commute from Parachute to Carbondale every day? No. May not apply when your staff/worker is in Key West. MC

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