Читать книгу Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm - Patrick MacLeamy - Страница 10

Determined to find a firm that felt like a good fit, I drove my Volkswagen Bug—the car of choice for college students of the mid-1960s—to Chicago, for an interview at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Their offices were in the iconic Inland Steel Building at 30 Monroe Street. Designed by Walter Netsch of SOM in the 1950s, the building featured perimeter columns and a side core for stairs and elevators, leaving the interior floors open. The SOM office was completely modular, in the international style, with long rows of drafting tables lined up under banks of fluorescent lights. I received a job offer at SOM, but the cold, rigid look of the place didn't feel right, and I declined. It may sound crazy to turn down a job offer, at what was perhaps the most prestigious architecture firm in the United States, because of the sterile look of its offices, but I was a budding architect looking for the right place to learn and grow. My search continued.

On spring break, I loaded my portfolio into the Bug and drove to Boston because design magazines regularly featured Boston firms. I interviewed with a lower-level staffer at a firm called Cambridge 7, who said my work was good but that they couldn't hire me that day. “Would you like to become an unpaid intern until we have an opening?” he asked. I needed a job now—and turned him down.