Design your life

An architect's guide to achieving a work/life balance

Clare Nash

• Publisher: RIBA Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000481709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Professional Practice in Architecture

Ten years ago, Clare Nash was struggling with a common problem: how to be an architect and still have a life. With no job, no savings and no clients in the midst of a recession, Clare set up her own practice with little more than a few postcards in local shop windows and a very simple website. Determined to better combine her life and family with professional work, she created an innovative practice that is flexible and forward-looking, based around remote working and the possibilities offered by improving technology.

Bursting with tips, ideas and how-tos on all aspects of designing a working life that suits you and your business, this book explains in clear and accessible language how to avoid the common pitfalls of long hours and low pay. It explores how to juggle work with family commitments, how to set your own career path and design priorities, and how to instil a flexible working culture within a busy lifestyle. Encompasses the full range of life-work challenges:

• Money, fees and cashflow
• Playing to your personal strengths
• Outsourcing areas of weakness
• Building a happy and productive remote-working team
• Creating a compelling marketing strategy
• Juggling parenthood and work
• Studying and honing workplace skills

Provides the inside view from innovative practices: alma-nac, Gbolade Design Studio, Harrison Stringfellow Architects, Invisible Studio Architects, Office S&M Architects, POoR Collective, Pride Road Architects and Transition by Design.

CHAPTER 1

How to be a business owner architect

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231301-1

BENEFITS OF YOUR OWN BUSINESS

I won’t pretend otherwise – running a business is hard. However, if you are entrepreneurial in spirit and prepared to think yourself out of problems creatively, it is very rewarding. I don’t know of a single business owner in any field who hasn’t had setbacks – sometimes enormous ones. The important thing is that they picked themselves back up again and made their business better. It’s easy to believe when looking at Instagram or reading business leader profiles that they’ve had an easy road to success, but the stories that lie behind those pictures are quite different. I have personally found it very challenging in a good way, as well as a lot of fun overall, despite my own setbacks.

Below, is a list of benefits of running your own business in a way that suits you. As an architect, when earning low fees and without a separate source of income, these benefits are only short-term. It’s possible to live for some time on low fees, just about paying your bills and enjoying your freedom, but sooner or later you will resent how hard you have to work and how much responsibility you take on behalf of clients.

• Family: this is a big one. It applies to anyone with caring commitments. Having my own business has enabled me to work around a tiny baby, not have to commute and pay enormous amounts on childcare, not have to put up with less exciting work just due to working ‘part-time’ in an office. Mainly, it has allowed me to feel a big part of my son’s life without having to give up my identity to do so.
• Set your own path: I explain in Chapter 3 how I have always been very interested in eco-design. It felt extremely frustrating not to be able to push sustainable practice as much as I would have liked in practice. As a business owner, I can prioritise research and development in this specialist area, which is very fulfilling.
• Other interests and business ventures: at start-up stage, I had a sideline in German translating for a local clothing company. It helped to pay my bills and gave me the advantage of doing something I enjoyed without the pressure of making it into a full-time job.

  

  FIGURE 1.1 Drawing of a working/pleasure trip I took to Brandenburg, Germany

  

  FIGURE 1.2 Benefits of flexible working means still being able to work on projects such as this stables and barn conversion, even with a family

• Working holidays: when I am writing, I regularly escape for a few days to the sea to write. I also visit gardens, sit alone in a beautiful space and write or sketch out business vision ideas. I have previously worked from the Eurostar, an Austrian brewery, a Parisian café and even a boat!
• Better use of time: the Covid-19 pandemic has made the benefits of working from home familiar to many more people, but I have always enjoyed the benefits of using natural breaks to make bread, chop vegetables for dinner or go for a walk. Without any guilt. In winter, I appreciate the opportunity to enjoy bike rides or running in daylight. I was fortunate while working in Oxford that my office had a shower and was on the doorstep of great outdoor space, so I enjoyed regular daylight runs in winter, but not all offices have this. Since my husband joined the firm, we enjoy lake swimming together in the middle of the day (while our son is at nursery).
• Other projects: like ‘other business ventures’, above, one of the best things about flexible working is being able to fit in other projects around being an architect. After receiving the commission from RIBA Publishing to write my book, Contemporary Vernacular Design: How British Housing Can Rediscover its Soul, I set about organising case study visits, complete with designer, developer and resident interviews. Keeping my business going would have been impossible if I had needed to be in an office every day, as would holding down a job in a traditional architect’s practice. My employers would have needed to be very enlightened and tolerant of me disappearing around the UK and Europe for up to 10 days at a time, multiple times, over a two-year period.
• Legacy: though possibly depressing for some, I find it uplifting to think about what my business may become without me, whether due to retirement, other interests or death. I want to create a truly sustainable business (in all senses) that lasts beyond my time on this earth.

DRAWBACKS OF YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Personally, there has only really been one drawback and that is the mental pressure on me as the sole director. I imagine it must feel easier as a partnership or a collective. Despite it taking me too long to realise this (see Chapter 7), I now draw on lots of help from my team, coaches, as well as my network of architects and consultants.

I do struggle sometimes to shut off easily in the evening/at weekends and focus on my life outside architecture. However, I don’t think this is exclusively about being a business owner; it also applies to people with a job, so I talk about this more in the work/life balance section (see p. 102).

Pressure and Responsibility: staying sane and good mindset practice

The separation of my personal self from my work self has been a long process. When your business is essentially your baby and you have put everything into it, it is hard not to take it personally when something goes wrong. However, I am not my business. I created it, but I am not it. Over the years I have learnt to separate myself more and more. If things go wrong, I try to remember it is a small failure in the vast sea of enjoyable projects and personal and business growth that I have enjoyed. As humans we focus on failure rather than achievements. It takes practise to reframe and rebalance. There are lots of mental techniques to deal with this. Here are some that I use:

• I look at my ‘vision or dream board’, which is a collage of pictures of things I want in my life and inspiring quotes. It shows me where I am going and what it is all for. One step backwards is only a small hindrance in getting there. It is all worth the effort.
• The stars or the sea never fail to make me feel small and insignificant (in a good way). If you are small, it means your problems must be too. They will pass. It also often brings to mind the time I visited San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Looking at the millions of stars in the Milky Way was awe-inspiring. I have always remembered the astronomer saying (in reference to astrology/horoscopes) ‘the stars don’t give a s**t about you’. And why would they? I remember this when I am anxious about a project. It is very liberating.
• I have a notebook in which I write all the good things that happen to me, be that a wonderful client testimonial or a lovely family day out or just a compliment. It really helps to flick back through that when times are tough.
• One of my business coaches, Chris Gardener, helped me to understand that my thoughts are just thoughts, they don’t need to mean anything.
• He also taught me this: Think about the fact that you can have two people living in the same house with the same problems. One is more optimistic and believes things will improve with a bit of time and energy; the other is very pessimistic and decides that they might as well give up because it’s all going to fail anyway. Both people will be ‘correct’, because how you imagine your future is how it will become.
• I have had hypnotherapy. It has been really helpful to understand how certain beliefs could hold me back. I now have a few separate ‘places’ I can go to in my mind that help me to deal with problems. One particularly helpful vision is of me being very large, healthy and happy in the foreground. Far away is a tiny client. This helps me to understand that client or project problems don’t need to take up so much space. My health is more important than any client.
• I garden. Gardening makes me feel closer to nature; I notice the seasons changing despite my troubles. Life carries on with or without you. That is very healing. Gardening is a form of creative activity; I get lost in it and again I am reminded of who I am, my overall reasons for being and that, no matter how big this problem feels right now, it will pass and I will carry on gardening.

The techniques that help you may be completely different. However, it is important to have those there as an arsenal to protect you when your times in business become rough – as they almost certainly will at some point.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE AS AN ARCHITECT WITH A JOB

I think there are a number of factors that contribute to enjoying being an architect as well as having a life around it:

• 1. Autonomy over your life and work choices.
• 2. An interesting project work.
• 3. Feeling appropriately rewarded and appreciated.
• 4. Working at a practice that has morals and values that match your own.
• 5. Being effective.
• 6. Having time to enjoy family or friends outside work.
• 7. Having time for hobbies and other interests.
• 8. An ability to switch off after work or at weekends.
• 9. Feeling well.

You might already have some of these, or you might have none of these. The more you have, the happier you will feel at work. As a business owner I have all of these, most of the time, and I know my employees feel the same way. At times I don’t feel rewarded enough for the stress involved or I fall back into bad habits of working too long or too late on projects without proper breaks. However, keeping tabs on these criteria helps to keep myself in check. So how can you get more of these things from your own place of work? First, I want to explain why architects particularly have a tendency to work too long and neglect many of the above in preference for ‘great work’ or career progression.

FIGURE 1.3 Time for my allotment and for growing is part of the ethics of my business model

LONG HOURS CULTURE AND PEER PRESSURE

If you are the type of architect who just cannot get enough, who loves working every hour of every day on architectural projects, then that is fine. However, if you are not the incredible Zaha Hadid by nature, then read on.

The long hours culture tends to start at architecture school. Until recently, when mental health issues became more understood, universities embraced a culture of coffee and all-nighters. Just like fine art, there is a sense of never finishing a project. This can lead to never feeling good enough and to over-perfectionism, neither of which are healthy traits. I heard about one overseas boss (from a student intern) who made employees wait for his latest creative idea, whether that happened at 1am or 10am, because he couldn’t possibly fit his ‘creativity’ into normal working hours. What is going on here? Yes, creativity can happen at any time at all, but others do not need to hang on to your every word. It can certainly wait until 9am the next morning. I mean, what an ego!

Presenting your work in crits in front of the people you most care about (your peers) is super-high pressure. You never forget that enormous fear of failure, of not being good enough, of always having more to work on.

The global pandemic has enforced a fundamental shift on how architectural practices work. I hope this leads to lasting change; particularly, that employers feel able to trust their team to work more flexibly. However, it is also up to the employee to take action. I regularly struggled with guilt, leaving the office at 5pm when others were still working but, overall, structuring my work like this had huge benefits on my efficiency, so no one complained. It is important to take action, not just expect an employer to provide this for you. Employers are busy people too; we need people to tell us when things need to change.

The long hours culture creates a vicious circle. You become less and less efficient because you are tired, and therefore need to work later and later to compensate. Not only this, but also your brain gets used to this schedule, so there is also no urgency around 4pm to complete whatever it is before you go home.

In this sluggish state, you are less likely to challenge poor business practice, even if you have an inkling that there is a better way. It is also a neurological fact that because we are pack animals, we do not like to stand apart from the group (we need to be accepted as part of the group because if we get booted out, we are far more likely to get eaten than if we remain part of the pack). You even have to override your prehistoric brain tendencies in order to make changes! All this is quite a tall order for any human, especially an overworked one keen to show commitment to their firm.

If you have children or other caring responsibilities, you may want to work part-time. I have done just that. However, it is notoriously difficult to find part-time work in architecture. I only hope that post-pandemic, finally we might understand that always being available is not essential. Collaboration does not need to be a constant background interruption; it can be more focused and useful.

Wanting to work part...