  My friend, Jane wrote this. Contrary to what her self-loathing high school English teacher told her, the girl can write. I've read her stuff and often wondered why she never pursued a writing career. Oh that's right, architecture pays more. Now, I present to you, "Intern Almighty" by Jane L. Decker. Genesis Imagine a child who for the first time may be realizing that a world lives and breathes around her.
Imagine the infant mind wandering and pondering. Her pubescent intellect exists in an untouched world with no boundaries or limitations. Theologically, she is closer to the Light. She’s got the whole world… in her hands… she’s got the whole wide world… in her hands… Sing along now. Where along life's path does she become consciously and tectonically aware of what her purpose is here on this planet?
Minutes, days, years. The vision, while not muddy necessarily to begin with, becomes clear at twenty-six. I, an intern architect, am going to build the world! Profundity is not my main objective but you have just now put index finger to chin and offered a “Hmm,” to your psyche’s astute audience. Your first instinct might be, “Oh no, I’m going to let a 26-year-old newbie build the world?! A girl, no less!” Your second thought flashed an image of the second-year resident, likely J.D.
from “Scrubs”, at West Regional about to perform his very first appendectomy. Both selections offer trained individuals with roughly the same type and quality of education. Do you build the house? Remove the appendix? I am neither going to build the next Taj Mahal or going to perform any type of serious surgery. I am, however, about to embark on one extraordinarily wild ride; a voyage where I will discover theories in children’s environments and playspaces, in senior citizens and their special needs, and perhaps even explanations of astrotechnological ecosystems and their specific considerations.
And that all might be in one day from one issue of Architectural Record. I didn't set out for this inflated egotistical approach to my profession; you asked the question and I have been thrust into some megalomaniacal haze of superiority. I am going to build the world. The sentence shifts from declarative to interrogative simultaneously.
I am not going to literally start from scratch mixing equal parts of magma, soil and such, blend well and bake at 450,000 degrees for a few million years, but I am going to participate in an activity that quintessentially defines the human spirit. We all experience “architecture” everyday. But have you ever realized how all of that happens and exists round you? I am not going to give a tour of the Building Department at the City of Miami. There is not a pair of scissors large-enough to cut through that much red tape in this very short essay.
Conversely, a brief jaunt through Process City is necessary. The architecture world and all of those acronyms you spend your first year learning, have deemed it necessary to not only entertain an extra year of training at the collegiate level to obtain the overly ostentatious 5-year First-Professional Bachelor Degree of Architecture but students must also follow a rigorous developmental path disguised as interning before even beginning to sit for nine, seemingly innocuous licensing exams.
It does’t stop there. With B.Arch in hand, the graduate could traverse the universe garnering experience in every notable field from philosophy to education to engineering and development, but it is interning which leads to the Grand Fork- a place where Opportunity stands with tour book in one hand and binoculars clenched tightly in the other looking ahead. I should try to assuage you and tell you that at that juncture we all idolize the same great myth and we all seek “good” design. However, the profession remains subjective and the source for our inspiration varies. I may see Richardson, Meier, and Pi in an entirely different light than you or the common man.
The common thread lay in our hopes and our dreams and eventually in the exploitation of our services as a whole all in great interest that one fateful day, the public will look up at an edifice and proclaim, “Damn! That’s good architecture.” Acceptance is a modest commodity in the architecture world. Humble people that we are, we all look forward, perhaps secretly, to being recognized and having our work qualitatively acknowledged. Reaching that point though takes a certain finesse- almost an education in how to train you client.
Victoria Beach brought up a point in her piece that compliments this though- “…shouldn’t licensed architects be ethically compelled to use their client’s project to serve architecture, while clients under their care assume similar obligations?” 2 This poignant remark does two things. First, it is correct to metaphorically compare our service to architecture in such a way that vividly illustrates our servitude and slavery to the field. Ask any architect why they became an architect and they will all reply something to the effect of “because I just had to”.
I personally guarantee that none of today’s architects pursued the field for financial reasons. The second thing that Beach’s statement does is recognize the obligations of the client. The only serious way to extinguish such a need would be to create the Client’s Business Plan for Understanding Architecture. In today’s hip terms, the book would be call “Architecture for Dummies”. Lamentations Architecture is a necessity, not a want. This would hypothesized in Chapter 1 of the above-mentioned book. Advertisers make fortunes peddling goods to the public that they don’t very well need.
A bag of Doritoes®. Chips-A-HoyTM in a travel cup. Facial cream that doubles as oven degreaser. I made that last one up. We do need architecture. We want good design. If year after year it is possible to come up with feasible strategies for making things you need even more desirable, I say we do it. The target audience sits-in-wait in front of their televisions waiting to be told what to enjoy, where to go, and what to eat.
And by the end of this essay, another SUV will be leased by Steve and Fifi Jenkins and their 2.5 kids. They already exist. We do not have to search out a market group or a specific demographic. They all live in homes, work in buildings, and worship in temples designed by architects. Architectural history is infinite and as old as time. If this were a movie, the screen would fade into a forced flashback of Neanderthal Man assembling tree limbs and palm fronds into a makeshift shelter. Our job is easy (lest the rigorous mission of getting into the profession) and it is complimentary that it has already begun.
The only deficiency is in the solution itself. Access. When the Internet evolved into the monster it has become, no one was capable of seeing the dillusion and the misinformation that could be circulated en masse. WebMD, for instance, affords the luxurious opportunity of armchair diagnoses; Food.com makes instant chefs; and Ebay fosters instant entrepreneurs emerging once again from that ooze we call capitalism to hock items like Grandma’s soup tourine and Uncle Bob’s ’57 Chevy. Access.
It is admirable to see “Intro to Arch 101” taking place presently at Target® with Graves' work and now Kohler's latest ad stabs at architecture’s importance: a self-confident man tours his firm boasting his creative achievements, Mr. & Mrs. Jones tagging along and admiring the gallery of work, only to sit down and ask "So, what can I do for you? " Mrs. Jones swiftly retrieves a faucet from her purse and dryly declares that the architect, "Design a house around this. " It is now the paradoxical evil that exists around architecture. I asked my mom about the Graves items at Target. She plainly replied, “Oh, I don’t bother looking at that stuff.” Is it because she doesn’t understand it? Doesn’t want to pay what they’re asking for it? My goodness, does she not realize it is the offspring of one of the greatest architects of the late 20th century?
Again, I implore that the profession and all of its egotistical manifestations are subjective. My colleague believes Graves to be adolescent and unsophisticated. From our side, it seems that the public has reduced our profession to a blue-collar classless evil. True, it is not everyday that a commission surfaces to resurrect the World Trade Center or restore Piazza San Pietro, so our exposure resides in the shadows. It should be possible to re-educate or re-introduce the public to the influence and absolute necessity of architecture in the ol’ “if you can beat ‘em, join ‘em” routine. Break the rules. Gropius asserts it best by explaining there not be an “arrogant barrier”1 between craftsmen and artist and the same could prophesize about societal manifestations and the egotistical architect.
Was it even more narcissistic and arrogant that Wright was granted licensure posthumously? That he didn’t dare require the nuisance of a license in order to justify his craft? If we all at some point aspire to achieve one-tenth of Wright, then certainly I am now of the caliber of Frank himself. I’ve passed one test, Pre-Design; proof-positive that at least I stayed awake and paid attention in history class. There is arrogance and there is modest amongst us. Yes, we’re a conflicted bunch. However un-Roark-ish it might be to follow the proverbial crowd and actually obtain a license and participate within the norm, we must adhere to the established guidelines in order to maintain the integrity of the profession.
I was told not to shout out in class. You were to raise your hand to speak. I was told never to cut in line, use fowl language, and to say “thank you” and “yes, please”. I was spanked if I misbehaved and did not consider dialing 1-800-96-ABUSE. While we cannot go back and slap Frank on the wrist or form an official Paddling Board, we can implement and follow-through with the ideals of the profession.
Heaven Tomorrow's architects will be emerging from another batch of gurgling lava, one more technologically advanced and competent than we have ever seen. Generation Z will do more than the X's and Y's and they will have the responsibility and obligation of obtaining a license, of determining almost literally, Wright from wrong. You hated it when your parents said it. And now you have succumbed. “When I was kid…” we drew by hand.
On drafting tables. With a T-square. I chuckle that I will tell this same story to my children, in the distant future, and they will gaze back at me awe-inspired by the tools of yesteryear. Tomorrow will emerge faster than we all think and the tools to “do” or “make” architecture are metamorphisizing as we speak. We secretly ache for those IBM tablet things that you can take anywhere and sketch and draw on in a whim. We imagine, “What would Frank think of this?” We desire the tools to make us swifter, faster, and better so we can keep up with Steve and Fifi.
So, our first task on the presidential platform of Tomorrow’s Architecture should be self-exploratory, discovering what or who or why it is we became what we are. After that, it will come naturally – the ability to give back to the people a lesson in good architecture. Beach also says that we should let people, not policy decide when a building has achieved architecture.
The dilemma here would then be who is qualified to make that call. The common man or woman, your neighbor, my mother may not know the difference between the cornice and pedestal, the fenestration or whatever, of a building, yet we should allow them to judge? Yes, but first a mainstream program of inviting knowledge would have to be put forth in order to insure a good review. Revelations The appendix is gone and you’ve got that vacant piece of land up in Central Florida.
You wonder if I am the greasy, slick-haired salesman who is going to proffer excessive inches of crown-moulding or imbue Feng Shui-style tactics to find your chi. You hope I have dissected Corbu, analyzed Mies, and memorized Wright. You fancy a cultured and academic, perhaps sterile approach and want me to forcibly feed you “good” architecture. I on the other hand, still swing my garden hat in that idyllic setting filled with pansies dreaming of grand cathedrals, soaring towers, and lush manors wondering if you know what it means to not be licensed and what good architecture truly is. I hold the power to shape the future of architecture… and “a mixture of passion, hope, fear, concern, and enthusiasm for the profession.”3 He steps off the curb and begins to cross the street.
He holds both arms powerfully and defiantly in the air, with a sweeping motion, widening grin and the pop song in the background, he quite matter-of-factly exclaims in tune with the song, “I’ve got the power!” Jim Carrey in his deity-like role in Bruce Almighty, revels with vigor. The swell and surge of emotion pulses through my veins… suddenly that childhood song becomes that tectonic reality I was looking for... I've got the whole world... And you… The Client? You’ve got an architect that wants to give you the world in a neat and tidy little package called Your Project. Learn how to let him do it. 1 Programs and Manifestoes on 20th Century Architecture, MIT Press, 1964. Originally published by Walter Gropius, 1919. 2 Beach, AIA, Victoria.
A Case for Unprofessional Architecture: Professional Licensure is a misleading measure of architectural skill, Architecture Magazine, July 2003. p. 107 3 Superpowered Interns, ArchVoices Electronic Newsletter, April 9, 2004. 
