SPACE November 2022 (No. 660)
Thinking of Architects as Professionals: The Story of the Fifth Years or More Employees
Song Jaewook songgot, Lee Sena Samoo Architects & Engineers, Lim Sera Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, Choi Yoomi MASS STUDIES
× SPACE
Entering Architectural Design Industry Full-time
SPACE If I am not wrong, everyone here has a degree related to architecture. And so you all must have weighed up various options after graduation, such as entering a construction company or going abroad for further study. What made you opt for and stick with a career path in design leading all the way to your present workplace?
Choi Yoomi (Choi) As I was entering the field of design, I thought to myself that the first thing I should do is to get a general grasp of what it was to deal with a project, and so I got into a small office at my professor’s recommendation. However, it was way too small. However, there were fewer people than I received in advance, and I quit after six months because I thought it would not be easy to learn while working with the director and managers. I realised that it would be difficult to pick up skills while working with a twelve-year veteran, and so I resigned in six months. The second office that I got into was an of twelve people atelier called JYA-RCHITECTS. I learned the trade for about two years there, but again I felt that there were various limitations to being employed in a small-scale atelier. For example, the variety of project scales were restricted by the small number of staff. I wanted to experience a greater variety of projects, and so I moved to a mid-sized atelier MASS STUDIES (hereinafter MASS) and I’ve worked there ever since. In total, this is my seventh year working there.
Lim Sera (Lim) During my study break, I worked as an intern at Sou Fujimoto Architects in Japan. After returning to Korea, I did another internship at MASS, and as I was preparing to go abroad for further studies. However, I decided to postpone my plans as marriage entered my life. I wanted to follow my husband to China where he worked, and while I was contemplating between studies elsewhere and in China, I had the chance to travel to Shanghai for a leisure trip with my husband. As I was fond of Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu’s architecture, we ate at a fine dining restaurant designed by them. Coincidentally, I bumped into them while there. Upon hearing my husband’s introduction that I had an acute interest in Neri&Hu Design and Research Office (hereinafter Neri&Hu) and I began travelling around admiring their designs, and they invited me to visit their office. As I was talking with them, I showcased them my portfolio, one that I had prepared for cases like this, and I was offered work. Since I could both accompany my husband while also working in the architecture field, I decided to postpone my plans to study abroad. I have now worked at Neri&Hu for about seven years.
Lee Sena (Lee) When I first entered college, the general idea was to eventually work in design. But after completing four years of study, I felt that I was not ready for work and so I took a break. During this period, I came across many books while I was working on random tasks at my retired professor’s office, and I gradually formed an interest toward continuing my studies and entered a theory lab as part of my graduate programme. In order to keep myself connected with design work, I went into a small atelier during my fifth-year semester. After about eight or nine months there, I felt that the project scale was quite limited. This atelier was focused on residential projects, and it seemed like their projects were all the same in context but only different in form. It was then that I decided to enter a more sizable firm, and I applied to Samoo Architects & Engineers (hereinafter Samoo) during their open recruitment season as I was finishing my graduate studies. This is my sixth year working there.
Song Jaewook (Song) Ever since my student years, I always wanted to work in design, but as I was considering different career paths, I decided I wanted to go in a different direction to that of architecture. This realisation made me feel a deep regret about the past five years of studies, and so I decided to at least try working in design before deciding to work elsewhere. My first workplace was a midscaleatelier called SKM Architects (hereinafter SKM). As soon as I began work, I was sent to work for two years at the site of Ananti Busan sized at about 50,000-pyeong in total floor area. I felt like the scale was too big for me to wrap my head around it. I worked there for a little more than three years before moving onto Samuso Hyojadong (hereinafter Hyojadong). This office was somewhere I had already been acquainted with during my student years, and I felt that this company was consistent in terms of the high quality of its output despite the small number of staff. As I also had plans to go independent, I wanted to experience how a small atelier would be managed. During my three years at Hyojadong, I got my architect’s license. I then worked for about a year as a freelancer, until I saw my friends in design going independent and opening their offices. Bearing witness to the ways they just went independent, without expressing too many worries or qualms, I thought, ‘perhaps I could also open an office without a business license’, and arranged to create a place of my own. Later, I got my business registration certificate and officially opened songgot. This is my eighth year working in this industry, but it has only been a little more than a year since I opened my office.
SPACE Now that all of you have worked for about six to eight years, you must have experienced the sense that each year comes with its own concerns. I assume that everyone is now somewhere in the middle in terms of their career ladder. What kind of changes or challenges did you meet over these past few years?
Lim Because I received my training mostly in Korea, I was worried whether I would be able to get to the position of manager given the competition from my more nternationally exposed teammates in this foreign working environment. Most of my colleagues did their Masters in the US and were fluent in English, and this made me question myself and what I could do and achieve. Fortunately, I was placed in charge of Seolhwasoo Flagship Store as my first project, and there were many things to which I could visibly and actively contribute. The second project, however, was in China, and there were difficulties in terms of adapting to the Chinese culture and taking control over the site. Now that I have somewhat gotten used to the position, and with my newly-acquired skills, the work feels less burdensome.
Lee I was placed into a project team for Incheon International Airport and I was put in charge of the basic design of the working design. Because I could not really grasp the needs of a project of this scale in these early years of my career, it always felt like my abilities could not catch up with my desires, but a senior colleague reassured me saying that in time I will be able to do what others can. I was then put in charge of another new airport project three years later, and surprisingly it did not feel as foreign. I came to appreciate the process at the working design stage more than the basic design stage. Later, I also got to work on a small-scale project of the kind with which Samoo does not typically engage. During these stages, I started to question myself and if I should pursue becoming a generalist or a specialist in terms of my career path.
During these stages,
I started to
question
myself and if I
should pursue
becoming a
generalist or
a specialist in
terms
of my career
path.
The Losses and Gains of Working in Architectural Industy
SPACE The Korean architectural scene seems quite restricted to its dominant model of star architects whose offices cannot but depend on their reputation as means for their growth. But is there another means of survival in our design field? What would you consider to be your losses from working in design, and what compels you to continue working in the field, regardless?
Choi I am currently participating in a project with almost ten teammates and I am somewhere in the middle in terms of rank. When the team leaders make the decisions regarding the work authorisation, I exchange with and delegate to the staff members below my rank. I only did what I was told to do when I was in the lower ranks, but now that I am in the middle position, I can see a bigger picture. For example, I started contemplating how decisions get made, and how the client’s intentions are realised. The best thing about MASS is that they do not do boring projects. Instead of being driven by money, they only do projects that reflect what Cho Minsuk (principal, MASS STUDIES) has to say. Each project turns out to have its unique properties, and it is fascinating to see how manager Cho Minsuk takes a different approach for each one of them. But this gave me disc problems. (laugh)
Lim In Neri&Hu, there are the junior architects, above them are the senior architects, and then the associates, and finally Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu. Usually, the senior architect takes charge of the project and the associate organises various aspects of projects. Since I am a senior architect, I lead the project under the associate’s direction. Because we collaborate with brands like Amorepacific, our working range is not only pure architecture but also commercial architecture. In my experience of working at Neri&Hu, I have learned many new architectural languages. When I was under manager Cho Minsuk from MASS, the work environment was extremely close-knitted in terms of physical distance. For example, when I was working on the projects, I had to sit next to the manager himself. From the beginning, Neri&Hu set a big direction and deliver it to us, or vice versa, we set and propose it to them. It is mostly the teammates making decisions in the project direction or theme and getting them approved by them later. I think this is possible because there are about seven associates who have worked there for more than ten years and are already familiar with the visual and structural language of these two architects. Also, the way Coronavirus Disease-19 affected our field and its systems has also played an important role. Now, about 10% of the staff work overseas in their home countries. Many of my teammates on the project that I am currently overseeing are spread across the world, in Shanghai, Milan, and Belgium. The company does not track our working hours, and everyone is simply asked to perform their duties responsibly. I find it better to work at night as I currently have a young child, and this works well with the teammates in Europe. As a mother, working conditions that allow staffs members to work at home in their own countries fits me perfectly.
Lee My office used to have a reversed pyramidal structure with multiple manager-level staff members but a new recruit came in recently. So nowadays, I am wondering how we should divide up the work. The good thing about Samoo is its staff welfare. It practices a half-autonomous working hour system where as long as you fill up the core hours, you can use the rest of your time however you want. The company also offers workshop programmes for staff members to learn skills such as Revit or coding. It helps its staff to challenge themselves and to think about new skillsets or areas of expertise. Another good thing about Samoo is that we can create mega-scale projects with specific functions, like airports. Airports are equipped with a secure area that the general public cannot enter, and it was particularly interesting to be able to design and get to know its inner security operations. Because you cannot return to Samoo once you leave it, I am trying to experience these unique opportunities as much as I can.
Song Regardless of their workload, SKM constantly recruit new people and so there is always a balanced distribution of staff members from new recruits to people with 15 – 20 years of mileage. On the other hand, there was not a free atmosphere, also the intensity of work was high. When I was at Hyojadong, there were about four colleagues and most of them were newcomers of one to two years. And so I had to conduct a number of projects of varying scales on my own each year. In a way, thanks to this I was able internalise the architectural style of Hyojadong in a short amount of time.
SPACE I think there is a period in time where you come to internalise the architectural vocabulary of the workplace that you are in. What value does this have?
Song You cannot become an author just because you know the alphabet and grammar. When appreciating a good piece of work, I think it is necessary that we understand how this work came about in order to go beyond the individual letters to make proper sentences out of them.
Choi While the internalisation of someone else’s vocabulary might be useful in terms of efficiency, it may also become something of a double-edged sword when it comes to someone who is thinking of becoming independent. It is possible that one might start to blindly imitate—in fact, there are many architects who resemble the styles of their previous workplaces. But if one were to take these styles merely as a reference, they will undoubtedly be helpful.
SPACE After working for more than fifth years, I think that you might have come to develop a general idea of what it is like to work in a design office overall. What do you think about the working environment in Korea? Receiving not enough pay is a problem raised by everyone everywhere. But for what specific reason do you think that the architectural design industry deserves higher wages?
Choi When I first got into MASS it already had – albeit modest – an overtime policy and its work hours were relatively flexible. If they had fixed the wages by manually calculating each staff’s work hours it would not have been able to grow into the scale of fifty personnel. It has now adapted into the standard work model where work hours are recorded electronically and overtime hours are kept within a fixed number. There used to be staff members who would work twice the amount of allowed work hours per month but that is no longer legally possible. The company took about a year to transition into this system, but as we know, sometimes overtime work is required in this industry. If I was a new recruit who had just joined after only one or two years, I would have complained that there were too many overtime sessions and that the working culture deviates too often from a standardized model. But now, I can understand why these overtime sessions are necessary. I think the reason overtime is so common in the design industry lies in the way society perceives architecture. I think not many people are aware of how much time goes into design.
Lee When we have to do overtime work at Samoo, the staff is asked to set the computer time to a different timezone. This is to mitigate the automatic feature inside the computer that turns itself off when a certain time is reached. We have to do this because making people work more than 52 hours per week can get the company president arrested! (laugh) Shouldn’t there also be a change in the perspective towards the client regarding design work for such working conditions to be relieved? People tend to view design as a service industry, and now that people are doing their own interior design, they are less willing to fork out appropriate payments. Maybe this is why we are now facing this situation where we have to work extra hard for lower pay? But there are also positive trends in relation to wage. The airport project that I participated in is under construction according to the 'Business Guidelines for the Implementation of Design Intents of Public Building' policy that was noted in 2020. This policy allows the designer to participate and oversee the construction stage, and there is a fee designated to this role. This policy is currently only effective for public projects for now, but it will be expanded to cover other buildings so that not only do architects get to realise the original design intent in their buildings but also get a boost in their payment.
Song Many things foreign to a general working life in design have been added recently. Now that we have more offices dealing with branding or construction along with design, the working range of architects has expanded. I guess people started leaning into these fields because it is a fact that branding or construction is a more profitable field than design itself. In this work community I have named songgot, I want to devise a place where anyone – even if that person is not all keen on architecture – can come and make a stable life for themselves. But not all offices that I have been part of or have heard of have such consideration for the wellbeing of their staff.
Lim I did a short internship at MASS and Sou Fujimoto Architects in Japan. They were places with extreme work conditions. There were many who did not go home for three days, and we had to design furniture as well. Although there was high pay, as Sou Fujimoto was a star architect, the work environment was modest and everyone brought their own food to eat during meal breaks. The work environment in Neri&Hu is quite different. The pay is much higher and there is almost no overtime. This makes me question, if projects can be conducted and completed in such a balanced work environment, why was it necessary to work overtime? Is it because we were trying to finish a three-person job with just two people? Also, while pay is typically determined by the number of years you worked in the office in Korea, we can negotiate our pay at Neiri&Hu every year based on personal merit. A new recruit can double his or her pay if he or she becomes a crucial cog in the company. It can be rather competitive, but it is also liberal. What I want to see institutionally changed in design work is the adoption of policies that are friendly to women raising children at home. Fortunately, Neri&Hu allows female staff members like myself with young families to leave work at 6pm, but I do not know if that is also the case in Korea.
SPACE I think work environments differ by region. Is the position of an architect a reputable and highly-paid job in Shanghai?
Lim Because famous architecture companies like Kengo Kuma & Associates usually build their Asia branches in Shanghai, the starting wage here is much higher than in Korea. This might be outdated news, but when I went to Shanghai for the first time, the Chinese people perceived architects as high-salary professionals. To use a small interior project as example, while payments in Korea are often given out as a total sum that includes both design and construction fees, however, these fees are calculated separately in China. Perhaps this is why my friends who have gone independent after working in Shanghai tend to end up managing their offices from a relatively stable position despite their youth.
SPACE To mention some key institutionalised practices in Korea, there is the ‘architectural accrediting system’ and ‘architect’s license’. How do these educational bodies or institutions support the actual work?
Song I think that school education should not merely be about equipping individuals with skills for actual work, but that it should familiarise them with what actual work is like so that they do not feel too lost in their first two years or so on site.
Choi Does everyone who applies to architecture want to become an architect? I think that the current curriculum is appropriate if that’s the case. But it is unfortunate that there are not many opportunities for students to discover the specific focus within architecture that they would find most fitting for themselves. There are also not enough opportunities to understand how working environments differ between small-scale ateliers and large companies. I think such information can be significant and helpful when making future plans and addressing necessary change.
Lee Most of the classes are focused on design. There are many things going on in between the start and end of an architecture project, but all processes other than design are treated like side notes and taught only once during those five years. Furthermore, design classes tend to be largely influenced by the professor’s personal opinion. During my studies, I received inconsistent grades based on the professor’s personal styles and approaches, and this discouraged me. I wondered to myself, ‘can I really do architecture?’ Now that I have experienced various aspects of design in my working life, however, I have discovered what I can do best and recovered my confidence.
Lim Compared to Europe or the US, architectural education in East Asia tends to be quite restricted. I think that Asia is now becoming a cultural touchstone in architecture. Non-asian countries are now focusing on Asian architecture, and yet it seems like we are not taking advantage of this potential and opportunity. It is something Korean architectural education should reflect on.
Song I had a good time preparing for architects qualifying examination. I was not taught about the institution at school, and by the time you reach about three or four years of schooling, you end up being in a state of knowing something and yet also not knowing exactly what you know. The architects qualifying examination is helpful in that it organises certain key concepts and requires you to memorise them. Through it, you also gain new perspectives and understanding of how often-criticised problems such as the ‘housing business’ came about.
Lee In the architects qualifying examination, most questions are on small-scale buildings. These are completely different things from what I should be memorising as I mostly deal with large-scale projects. And so my exam preparation was just studying for the exam’s sake. Also, as part of the pre-requirements to take the exam, one has to list the total amount of work experience and how much time was spent on each project. In my case, however, I only did one project for three years, and it was not easy to break it down into parts according to the form’s expectation. It seemed to me that the architects qualifying examination had not considered the fact that there might be various kinds of working contexts based on a project’s scale.
Compared to
Europe or the US,
architectural
education in
East Asia tends
to be quite restricted.
I think that
Asia is now becoming
a cultural
touchstone in architecture.
Non-asian
countries are
now focusing on
Asian architecture,
and yet it seems
like
we are not
taking advantage
of this
potential and opportunity.
It is something
Korean architectural
education should
reflect on.
Looking to the Architectural Design Field
SPACE Many things have to be reconsidered and transformed in our present design Field. Returning to your personal world, what is your professional view of design work?
Lim Now that I have settled down somewhat as a professional in this line of work, I can see myself continuing to do it into my old age. An architect is actually a great position. Your skills stay with you and so it is not difficult to return to it even after taking a break for a while. I am mostly grateful that I can continue doing this same job for such an extended period, even while raising a child.
Lee I wanted to do something that feels worthwhile, and design is just that. There is a sense of gratification, like finishing a work of art, and I think this will keep me going as a designer.
Song In terms of dismissal or denigration, we are sometimes called the ‘authorization office’ or ‘architectural business’. I used to strive for a distinction between myself from those who fit those names. Then I realised that running an architectural business can be as hard as becoming an architect, and that sometimes those so-called authorisation offices do fulfill social demands. I now think that we have to first build experience as an architectural business to become good architects afterwards.
Lim Out of personal curiosity, now that you have your own office, do you accept requests like major renovations that are often done by so-called authorisation offices?
Song I used to reject them, but now I just quote them my fee! (laugh)
Choi I thought of becoming an architect from eighth grade onwards. The reason was ‘Love House’. What an architect was doing seemed like something so beneficial to society. There may be differences between what is real and ideal, but there are definitely works that can benefit others. And so I want to continue in this line of work.
SPACE Where and in what kind of work do you see yourselves in the future?
Lim My main concern now is living the life of a builder in parallel with my childcare responsibilities. It’s not as easy as I thought! Independence is what I hope for in the future. I hope to be able to balance my caring responsibilities and my work commitments in a balanced and sustainable way.
Lee If there is one thing that arises at the point of each passing, we study it to the greatest possible degree, even if it is not related to the design. Then, in a new slightly expanded space beyond the physical limitations of architecture, one will be able to practice architecture in the measured and resilient fashion required by the times.
Song Sustainability is no longer a new topic, but it’s a story that I can’t help but think deeply, and the ways it relates to those like me, who are taking their first steps. Rather than dreaming of any particular place and form, the goal is to make this work on sustainable projects enjoyable, not only for me, but also for the employees and juniors who I collaborate with.
Choi My goal is to be honest and independent to the end. As I work within my favorite business, I forget my myself all the time. I think it’s difficult and very important to be thinking continuously about one’s independence without falling into mannerism or choosing an easy answer. It’s my desire and promise to keep decisions close to my heart, the one that was beating when I first dreamed of becoming an architect.
