S1E4 Redlines - Audiobook Episode
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Jake Rudin: [00:00:00]

You're not paying me. Do you Want to be able to say that you worked here? I did work here. I'm here now, physically. I just finished a model for you. Well. At the end of your internship, the firm signs a letter saying that you worked here.

That's your pay. That's your proof. Are you telling me, he said, mimicking the slow, deliberate tone of the manager, that if I leave now, I'm not going to get this letter? A small smirk surfaced on the man's face. Yes, absolutely.

Erin Pellegrino: This is Redlines by OutOfArchitecture.

The Mission of Redlines
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Erin Pellegrino: The experiences that isolate us in our working world are also the stories that can unite our community and allow us to heal. In this series, we dive deeper into the core issues that plague the design profession and evaluate how they result in [00:01:00] everyday conflict, discomfort, and workplace turmoil.

The Mission of Redlines and the Hosts' Background
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Erin Pellegrino: We are your hosts, Jake Rudin and Aaron Pellegrino, the founders of OutofArchitecture, a career resource network for architects and designers looking to find greater fulfillment in their work and help navigating the many challenges within the profession. Through our work, we've spoken with thousands of individuals, all with unique pathways and experiences.

Too often in this work, we encounter stories of struggle, tension, and suffering. Redlines seeks to bring a voice to these stories. Those privately endured in a school or workplace, but often clouded by shame, self doubt, and the questioning of one's professional choices.

On the last episode, we had two guests join us to share their horror stories from their unpaid internship abroad. This week, we thought we'd share a special set of stories with you from our audiobook. One of which I mentioned in response to last week's guests, the stories this week are focused on the strange cultural phenomenon of [00:02:00] working for little to no money, simply for the opportunity to participate in great architecture.

We'll be resuming our interviews with storytellers from our community in the next episode, and are always looking for more of you to come forward and share your experiences from the profession. If you have an experience to share that you think would make a good episode of Redlines, reach us via email at redlines at outofarchitecture.

com. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this collection of two tales from the OOA Anthology.

Jake Rudin: We're not taking interns. The Jake's portfolio back across the reception desk. She had a rich, resonant voice and tortoiseshell glasses. And she seemed not at all interested in the work of reception.

Okay, I'll just leave a copy of my portfolio. If anything changes, please let me know. Jake pushed his portfolio back toward the woman. [00:03:00] This time, she didn't look up at all. He paused for a few seconds, waiting for an acknowledgment. Realizing none was coming, he thanked her and turned confidently to leave.

He sensed that this was a bit of theater. The firm was demonstrating its exclusivity by feigning disinterest. He knew they took unpaid interns regularly and suspected or hoped that part of the route to working there was demonstrating both tenacity and deference. He couldn't bring himself to grovel at the feet of reception, but he was more than willing to drop off a copy of his portfolio every day.

He had brought plenty to spare. Jake arrived in Rome two weeks before their six month semester was scheduled to begin. He determined ahead of time to spend a period working for a firm there before he returned stateside. Sometimes students stayed behind in the city and took a semester off. That gave them a full semester to do an internship abroad without having to pay International Airfare a second [00:04:00] time.

That approach was fairly typical in the recent history of the program. Jake had a habit of taking anything typical and dialing it up a few notches. He thought he might combine the study abroad semester with the internship semester. It would be difficult, since architecture school demanded a lot of its students.

Early in the semester, they were expected to put in 6 8 hour days. It would be more like 10 or 12 during finals week. Europe had no shortage of espresso and he felt reasonably confident he could make it work. He set his eye on working for a prominent international architect based in Italy, and he had been dropping off portfolios there since his second day in Rome.

The first day was primarily reserved for sleeping off his minor jet lag. Every day since, he had walked into the small, exclusive firm, sat down in the receiving area, and asked to speak to the lead architect himself. Every day, he had been turned away with varying degrees of dismissal. They were [00:05:00] undeniably beginning to recognize him, and that could only help his chances.

Then one day, his request to speak with the architect did not receive the typical dismissal. Instead, he was directed to take a seat in reception. The person who emerged ten minutes later wasn't the architect, but he wasn't a security guard either. The man introduced himself as the firm's studio manager, and as they walked back to his office, a small room off the shop floor, he stopped in a break room to refill his coffee.

Jake used the time in transit to highlight particularly strong aspects of his portfolio, noting his skill with woodworking and particular interest in model making and technology. 'We have strict limitations on our internship program, the studio manager said. Jake nodded to demonstrate understanding and flexibility.

So, I would like to take you on to work in the model shop, but you should know that we only offer unpaid internships in that area [00:06:00] to start. This was not at all unexpected. From what Jake had heard at school, most students took unpaid internships. And surely it was worth taking an unpaid role at a prestigious firm.

Working for free now was an investment in what would later become a wider range of career options because of this experience, right? The man continued, After six months, we can reevaluate and determine whether you would be eligible to stay on as a paid intern. Yes, that sounds amazing, Jake replied. I'm a student and we're just gearing up for the new semester.

I would just love any opportunity to get some experience working here. They talked more about the specific expectations of interns at the firm, and Jake noted that he could come in for a few hours a day after classes concluded in the afternoons. On the first day of the internship, he did just that. The firm was on his way home from school, and Jake popped through the door of the firm just as he had every day for the past few weeks.

He noted that the chilly reception [00:07:00] from the front desk remained consistent, even now that he had business there. He had a sense that he must prove himself, as though the assumption was that he would never measure up. He shrugged it off. Jake was happy to prove himself through the work. The model shop was a dream come true.

He was building models of incredible works of architecture. To be among the first to see pieces that would someday become hallmarks of contemporary architectural excellence was a new type of mind blowing. He could feel his life beginning to transform from student to professional. After all, he was building these models for actual clients.

The internship was intense from day one. He would arrive at the firm when classes were over, generally around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. He would work there for 6 hours or so, then walk back to the studio to finish his own projects, before heading home to catch a few hours of sleep. It was difficult, but certainly worth it.

Then, as February turned to [00:08:00] March, the expectations began to increase. He was now spending closer to 8 hours per day at the firm, and soon that increased to 10 hour shifts. He found himself walking back to the studio, exhausted and anxious in the early hours of the morning. If this had been the exception to the rule, one huge deadline, or a particularly taxing model, perhaps he could have made it work.

But this pace showed no signs of slowing. The models he was working with were incredible. And he was truly grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the firm's groundbreaking work. And yet, there were only so many hours in the day. When finals came around, it was clear that this schedule was unsustainable.

I wrapped up the Armani project, Jake said, leaning against the doorframe of the studio manager's office. The man looked up from his paperwork, bleary eyed. But I wanted to mention, he continued, I can't come in next week. It's finals week, [00:09:00] and there's just no way for me to do both. The man blinked. No, he said calmly, his eyes flashing behind the fatigue.

You'll have to find a way to come in. This was not the response Jake was expecting. If anyone understood the demands of finals week in architecture school, it should be architects. It's just not possible. There aren't enough hours in the day, he said regretfully. No. You must be here. Jake was flummoxed.

You're not paying me, he said, the words leaving his mouth before he could filter them. The man's demeanor was disconcertingly calm. Do you want to be able to say that you worked here? I did work here. I'm here now, physically. I just finished a model for you. What was this guy's game? Well. At the end of your internship, the firm signs a letter saying that you [00:10:00] worked here.

That's your pay. That's your proof. Jake's mouth would have dropped open if his jaw weren't so tightly clenched. Are you telling me, he said, mimicking the slow, deliberate tone of the manager, that if I leave now, I'm not going to get this letter? A small smirk surfaced on the man's face. Yes, absolutely.

Jake had tried to ignore the massive rift forming between the way work was discussed in school and the way labor functioned in the profession, at least at this one prestigious firm. Work, in architecture school, placed a premium on concept and creativity, but labor? The kind that means working 16 to 20 hour days every single day for the foreseeable future.

That wasn't something they discussed. In the end, [00:11:00] Jake would get that letter proving his hours of free labor donated to one of the most recognizable architects in the world. He had first used his determination to get the job, if you could call full time unpaid work a job. Now he would use it to get that letter.

The receptionist had warmed slightly to Jake over the weeks, and now looked at him with a hint of pity in her eyes when he strolled through the door. After sitting in the waiting room every day for the last two weeks of his time in Rome, he finally asked for an unsigned letter. Could you just get me the standard letter on the letterhead?

He asked the woman. She did that for him. At least he hadn't left Rome empty handed. He had the form letter certifying his internship hours. And he had pictures of the models he had painstakingly created. In school, the focus was always on concept. Jake realized this wasn't only a distraction from the practicalities of the profession, it was [00:12:00] also a refusal to recognize the real implications of sacrificing everything for your art, or in this case, for someone else's art.

That last part became clear enough a few weeks later after Jake returned to the States. In his resignation, Jake had asked permission to use the images of the models he had created in his portfolio. That permission had been granted by his immediate supervisor. A kind man who had been generous in a way that broke with the firm as a whole.

But one day, Jake awoke to an email from the firm's lawyer. It was a cease and desist letter, threatening a lawsuit if he didn't remove the work he had done for the firm from his website. In discussing the incident with other students, he learned that this experience was not uncommon. In fact, firms like these routinely brought in interns with the promise of paid jobs after the first six months.

They would be abruptly fired during their 7th or even [00:13:00] 8th month of work. This type of manipulation was par for the course in professional architecture. Part of paying your dues, some professors said. Some students said it too. It was as though school was training them to see everything but the exploitation.

Perhaps you experienced the disconnect during your own unpaid internship. Or maybe you felt it later, when you transitioned into the profession full time. Perhaps, like some of our clients, you found your first work experience out of school to be shockingly misaligned with your expectations. You eagerly sought out a job with a small but respectable architecture firm, one that was willing to work with you to gain the thousands of hours required for licensure, an issue of its own that we discuss later on in this book.

You cheerfully burst through the doors on your first day of work, coffee in hand, you sat down with your supervisor who gave you your first project. It was not at all what you thought it would be. Of course, [00:14:00] you knew you wouldn't be given huge design projects right out of the gate, but you hadn't expected to find yourself pricing window fittings and steel brackets.

You didn't think you'd be hunched over paperwork for eight hours every day. In school, you had studied architecture. You talked in concepts and design. Now you shuffled through the papers you'd gotten from your supervisor, and those abstract artistic ideas were nowhere to be found. You hung in there for a bit, hoping that this was just a matter of paying your dues.

But at some point it became clear that this was it. This was the job. Take it or leave it. Maybe you refused to be broken by this realization by the bait and switch you had built your life around. So you went home every day at five, if you were lucky, or more often six or seven and spent another seven or eight hours in the evening working on your own projects, honing your design skills and building a portfolio that would, you hoped, eventually allow you to design your way out.[00:15:00]

Or, maybe you experienced the disconnect most intensely after you'd worked in the profession for quite some time. Your architecture program had leaned into the practical more, or perhaps you were just young enough to take the shift in stride. Either way, you worked with a firm for several years before deciding it was time to earn your master's degree.

You had always wanted to go back to school, now you found yourself in a classroom full of twenty somethings who use the term B word rather than talking about buildings. Our friend David had this experience, warning us, as young graduate students, that the world outside the program's walls was truly and harshly different from the lessons we were discussing in lectures and the projects we were constructing in studio.

In our work, we find that this disconnect is one of the most common threads that ties all of our clients together. It's the sense that you were sold a bill of goods, that your training didn't match up with the expectations of the profession, and the profession couldn't live up to the vision you had for what it could be.[00:16:00]

This sense is deeper than disappointment. It's more than just paying your dues. It's a deeply embedded feeling that something is wrong. Maybe at this point, you decided to look around and see what else was out there. Or, if you were like many of our clients, you decided to soldier on in the hopes Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC.

In a painting that is, for architects, as iconic as it is illustrative, Michelangelo stands at the right edge of the frame, gesturing authoritatively toward a model of St. Peter's Cathedral. Several men are gathered around the model.

Including Pope Paul IV, as the great Renaissance artist regales the group with his presentation of the now famous cathedral's design. The model itself is impressive. Set on a short platform on the floor, the model stands as tall as [00:17:00] Michelangelo himself, and the artist has taken care to dress all in black, ensuring that the focus of the moment will be on the design, never on him.

Yet, the artist is central to the painting, meaningfully entitled Michelangelo Queda il Modellino di San Pietro a Paolo IV, or, roughly translated to English, Michelangelo Presents the Model of St. Peter's Cathedral Dome to Pope Paul IV, despite all apparent attempts to remain peripheral to the art.

Michelangelo remains the central figure of interest in the scene, and the name most associated with the Basilica's iconic dome. And while perhaps Domenico Cresti and his painting can't be blamed for omitting the full context of an enormous architectural project like St. Peter's Cathedral, the painting does seem to imply that the project was Michelangelo's alone.

It is as though the idea, perhaps even the model itself, sprung fully formed from the sculptor's brilliant mind. [00:18:00] No unpaid interns were harmed in the making of this model. Michelangelo almost certainly did not complete the model on his own. Nor was he even trained in the practical skills required to see a building through from design to structure.

It was the very distinction between artist and builder that granted Michelangelo the use of the title architect in the first place. As Mary Woods writes, The use of this title by men like Michelangelo was At the time, meant as a foil to builders. Builders constructed buildings. Artists dreamed. The former was a long established, often unionized trade.

It was clearly and explicitly a labor of the practical and material world. The latter was elevated in a way that gave the architect an air of artistic brilliance. The isolated individual pouring his heart and soul into the project, unsatisfied with any result that fell short [00:19:00] of creative genius. This image of the singular artist is one of the most persistent in the history of architecture.

Nearly 500 years after Michelangelo was commissioned to design the Basilica, the celebration of a lone, brilliant artist lives on through the Pritzker Prize. Forty years of laureates captured in the simplicity of black and white portraits. All but four of the award winners stand alone. Artists recognized for their attention to every detail and their indulgent dedication to flawless, beautiful design.

These men have no concern for paltry material things like money, food, rest, a social life. They subsist on art alone, which they create in the still, echoing isolation of their studios. The idea is as romantic as it is ludicrous. People need money. They need food. They need rest. And above all, they could not create much of anything without the contributions of [00:20:00] others.

Architecture has long privileged creators who had no real need for a salary, whose social position allowed them to work in incredibly inefficient ways, with underpaid peasants picking up the laborious, less glamorous tasks, while the artist obsessed over the signature details. These architects had access to relationships, often through family, that fast tracked their success.

And once they reached the top of the field, often relatively quickly, thanks to a letter of reference or a simple phone call from a powerful family friend, They leaned on others hidden labor to help them materialize their brilliant ideas. The ideas were their own, and they were often field changing, but the work was never theirs alone.

Architecture is commonly referred to as a gentleman's profession. The work of design was perfect for men of noble birth, who were enabled by family wealth to indulge in years of study and projects that cost more [00:21:00] to create than they could ever return. Woods writes, As a gentleman The professional was a man of chivalrous instincts and refined feelings.

His principal considerations, unlike those of merchants or tradesmen, were never financial. Honor guided his actions, and authority was his due. Woe betide the lowly craftspeople, who couldn't subsist on honor alone. Their contributions relegated to a footnote of history, if they were ever acknowledged at all.

As architecture students, you probably were not so independently wealthy that you could build a career on the promise of architecture or authority. And yet, your sense of dedication to your craft, your artistic vision, and your drive to create were likely instilled with a sense of honor. They were likely the reason you chose to attend architecture school in the first place.

As the years passed and you grew more immersed in the training, your determination to innovate and imagine new [00:22:00] concepts and ideas probably only intensified. Nobody imagines that they will be the next Michelangelo, but maybe you aspire to be the next Oscar Niemeyer, the next Kenzo Tange. There was no shortage of architects to emulate.

The contributions of these great men and a few great women were built into the fabric of architecture school. The parti diagrams you copied in drawing class originated from major architectural works. The history you learned centered on the pioneers of the field. The sites you visited were designed by the famous architects of history.

These were the field changing architects. These were your role models. You were in awe of their incredible attention to detail, how everything, from the concept to the design to the finished structure, was absolutely perfect. Their eye for nuance was as indulgent as it was inspiring. You could imagine the hours spent poring over subtleties of design that you hadn't even noticed until you were in architecture school.[00:23:00]

Those details weren't for clients. They were for the love of the craft. Those details encapsulated what it meant to practice architecture with honor. To practice in that way meant to embrace perfection. And as you moved through school, it became increasingly clear how important it was to work and rework every concept, detail, and project component until it was perfect.

Or, more often, until you ran out of time. Because as your eye for design sharpened, so did your ability to self critique. There was always something that you could do better. As long as there was still time, you could always do more. This wasn't just a student issue. After graduation, you quickly learned that this was how architecture worked.

It was up to you to present something the client would love. It was up to you to convince them to invest in you, often in competition with other architects. Your clients gave you parameters, and you delivered [00:24:00] them beauty, innovation, and aesthetic perfection. You weren't always aware of the ways that this drive for perfection sent you spiraling.

How you would forget to eat because you'd slipped into the infinite possibilities of editing a model in Rhino. How you'd sunk into a deep depression after you sat staring at six months worth of work that now felt utterly underwhelming. How you had worked enough unpaid overtime to effectively reduce your hourly rate below the poverty line because it meant you could construct the impossible details of intricately carved, movable furniture in the model for the client presentation.

For a client. who would never even hear your name. You weren't given a benchmark for when to stop working. What was good enough? But that wasn't the point. The point was to indulge in the limits of the beauty that your hands could craft. Michelangelo hadn't been given a benchmark either. This was part of emulating the masters.

Unfortunately, as much as you tried to learn [00:25:00] from their eye for perfection, there were other aspects of their lives you could never emulate. You couldn't magically recreate yourself as the child of a famous architect. If your family didn't have powerful political connections with the government officials, there was nothing you could do to change that.

Technically, you probably could have sought out a romantic or sexual relationship with a wealthy investor, but that didn't seem particularly desirable, even if it were possible. If you didn't have the connections by birth or marriage, if you weren't part of the gentry, you'd have to make do with what you had.

And when you dug deep into architectural history, including famous architects from the not so distant past and current big names in the field, the role of family wealth and personal connections glared back at you with contempt. The gentleman's profession, an idea that seemed so antiquated, was very much alive and well.

If you thought too hard about this, you realized how truly difficult making do without [00:26:00] connections might be. For example, you read about the wunderkind who exploded onto the architecture scene while still in school. His name was synonymous with edgy, high demand housing complexes across the city. A bit more digging revealed the enormous wealth that had funded his education.

That family inheritance meant that he would never have to work a day in his life if he didn't want to. Surely that was irrelevant, though, you thought. He had won a major competition, and he was undeniably talented. He was talented, that was true, but a snarky comment from one of your more controversial professors put things into context.

You know he was sleeping with the client's daughter at the time, right? The professor paused, waiting for your reaction. But, if we're being honest, that's not the least traditional way of winning a competition. As was often the case, one big competition early in your career could be leveraged into others down the line, and the rest was history.

This was the pattern, too, for the famous architect commissioned by his family. [00:27:00] Actually, there were several of these cases, you learned. Perhaps the most famous was a Pritzker Prize winner who had uniquely contributed to the understanding of architecture in the American context. His work was beautiful.

His theory was mind blowing. His family was wealthy, and they had been his first clients, investing in his potential through a commission to build them a home. Many years later, when he'd been awarded the top prize for architecture, it was as a solo artist, differentiated through the award from the team of architects at his firm, including his partner.

A lone genius, until you started to read more about him. Until you heard the inside scoop from professors and professionals in the field. Story uncomfortably against your assumptions about these role models. About the sense that they had risen to the top through the sheer perfection of their designs alone.

That they had risen to the top alone at all. And not only were the teams often totally erased, you [00:28:00] learned, too, that their teams were sometimes abused. There were the horror stories, of course, of students like Jake, whose internships were wielded against them as a way to extract more unpaid labor, who weren't allowed to use projects in their portfolios, whose work was totally invisibly swallowed up into the famous names of the field.

There were also the architects to fear, the ones your professors had suggested you intern for, but always in pairs. The buddy system, but grown up in the worst possible way. You were told this with a raise of the eyebrow or a whispered warning behind the closed door of an office. Just be sure you're never alone with him.

If he calls you into his office, keep the door open. For years, even generations, this quiet back channel circulated the dark stories behind the Starkitects, whose genius still meant they commanded the authority and respect of their station at the top of the gentleman's profession. When the lid was blown [00:29:00] off of one architect's history of sexual harassment, you nodded.

Maybe even shrugged. Disgusted, but unsurprised. Your classmates and professors had known about this for years. But what could be done? He was a pioneer in the field. A member of the gentry. What use was a peasant's word against nobility? What made this so hard to wrap your mind around was that these architects were undeniably talented.

It would have been so much easier if the work was shoddy or sloppy or derivative. But these were truly geniuses of the field. The fact that their social position had played such a heavy role in catapulting them to stardom certainly didn't diminish the value of their work to architecture. You had chosen to pursue this education because you loved the art form, and their art was amazing.

But, as you moved forward into the profession, it became impossible to ignore the advantages of your classmates with well connected families. The incredible edge provided by financial support. In Michelangelo's time, [00:30:00] Gentlemen embarked on the grand tour to become well rounded members of the gentry. Now, family wealth propped up unpaid internships, facilitated travel abroad, and offered the ability to focus on passion projects on which every detail was polished to perfection.

Family connections facilitated projects completed under one's own name. The gentry never had to labor, completing the invisible grunt work of one famous architect or another. Being able to participate fully in the gentleman's profession didn't diminish anyone's talent, but it helped to make time and space for that talent to develop, and it certainly helped to make that talent visible.

Meanwhile, talented classmates without the same social status were struggling for artistic recognition and minimum wage. Often, it was the architects and students struggling for minimum wage who came to Out of Architecture for guidance. One of Aaron's former students, Katie, had taken the professional practice course the year before.

Aaron remembered the group of students [00:31:00] vividly. She had brought in a young professor to do a guest lecture for the class. He was a practicing architect and had immigrated to the U. S., giving him a unique perspective on the financial aspect of the profession. Studying in America had been incredibly expensive for him, and he was open with the students about the costs, financial and otherwise.

Well, architecture's always been the gentleman's profession, he told the class. You're not supposed to think about money. He gave a soft chuckle, belied by his clear sense of disillusionment. Of course, that's not so easy when you're staring down hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. You've got this idea of the profession, but then the actual jobs barely cover your student loan payments.

Katie had lingered after class and thanked the speaker for his candor. Erin was surprised to see the student approaching the podium. She was very quiet and rarely spoke up in class, although she always smiled and nodded along with Erin's lectures. She seemed shy. Even a bit deferential. That day, Katie had seemed nervous to approach the [00:32:00] speaker, but seemed to relax once they started chatting.

The student had shared then that she came from a lower middle class family in West Virginia. Her father was a house painter, and her mother was an elementary school teacher. She'd gotten an education in the gentleman's profession during her first few years in school, when so many other students seemed to have a very different perspective on money than she did.

Katie knew about hard work, and she understood well How much a few hundred dollars could mean if you were teetering on the edge of making ends meet. Now, in her final year of the program, she had asked Aaron for a private meeting as an extension of both the professorship and out of architecture. Katie explained that she had been given the opportunity to participate in a project with one of her professors.

The professor, a relatively well known architect on the east coast, was working on a competition and had approached her about contributing a series of renderings. I was so excited because they were going to pay me, Katie explained. [00:33:00] Aaron noticed that her drawl had gotten less pronounced since they had first met.

Katie, it seemed, was not only cognizant of the quality of her work, she was also incredibly aware of the things that made her stand out from other students. What did you charge them? Aaron asked, masking her sense of dread. Students never ask for the amount of money they were worth. 10 an hour, Katie replied.

I didn't charge for materials or anything like that, she said, because I didn't want to seem greedy. I'm just grateful to have the opportunity. The student went on to explain that she had completed the renderings and submitted the invoice. The total came to 600. It had been her first invoice. She borrowed a template from a friend and was so proud to submit it to her professor.

She'd thought the professor would be impressed. Instead, he had countered with an offer to pay her only 250. I know 600 is a lot of money, she said, a trace of disbelief in her voice. But I thought that's what we agreed on. [00:34:00] Aaron nodded sympathetically, then drew in a sharp breath. Okay, well, the first thing I would say is that I know people who charge 2, 000 per image.

The student's eyes grew wide. That's 10, 000. So if you're feeling like you overcharged, let me just put that to rest. Aaron felt herself growing angrier and angrier on the student's behalf. It was clear that the professor had entered a competition, and realizing the possibility that he wouldn't win the job, he had leveraged chief student work under his own name.

No doubt the professor was indulging himself with the fine details of design while his student completed hours of labor for the honor of working under him. The amount Katie had requested was already a dramatic underpayment for the student's time and talent. To undercut that invoice by half was shockingly unethical behavior.

I probably would have just let it go, Katie continued, but then he published the design and he spelled [00:35:00] my entire name wrong, first and last. Tears welled up in her eyes and she blinked them away. Erin was glad to see a flash of indignation behind the woman's quiet demeanor. I won't even get searchability from that.

We wish we could say that Katie's experience was isolated. That it was a result of one bad apple in the profession. But sadly, the use of underpaid or unpaid laborers to prop up the elite names in architecture is baked into the history of the profession. The professor didn't worry about whether Katie's name was spelled correctly because, to him, the project had very little to do with her.

The project was always about him. His authority and honor. When Michelangelo pointed his long, thin finger toward that model of St. Peter's Dome, he gestured toward the work of an indefinable group of unnamed others. Omissions, that like the misspelling of Cady's name, render invisible so much of the labor of architecture.

We do not [00:36:00] believe that recognizing the contributions of others to Michelangelo's iconic work diminishes its prestige. We certainly don't mean to dismiss his beautiful, paradigm shifting architectural perfection. There is no doubt that the artist was a genius. and that his vision changed the future of Western aesthetics.

And yet, Michelangelo himself must have known that vision and genius alone would never have been enough. That his family's land ownership positioned him as a member of the gentry and allowed him to enter the honor of the architect rather than the hard labor of the tradesman. The world is fortunate for that accident of birth.

Had Michelangelo been born to a family of servants or laborers, perhaps our contemporary notion of architecture would look very different. It would have suffered without his influence. That is precisely our point. If we believe in the power of architecture, of art, design, beauty, and [00:37:00] innovative uses of material and space to change our lives for the better, then we must believe in a way of practicing those ideals outside the modern day gentry.

As long as being an architect requires some level of independent wealth, we are dedicated to helping our clients find spaces to practice the skills they love outside of the gentleman's profession. Katie had found her work on the professor's project to be exciting and fulfilling. Yet when Erin asked her to reflect on whether she would be willing to continue working for him if the wages remained well below the minimum wage, Katie ultimately found the courage to say no.

She drafted an email to the professor, and Erin was thrilled to see that the student had communicated her needs and boundaries clearly, professionally, and without a hint of deference. The email courteously asked to be paid at the previously agreed upon rate, and requested that the misspelling of her name be corrected on the publication.

Weeks passed with no reply. [00:38:00] Katie followed up first via email, then by phone message. Finally, she received a reply which she shared with Aaron. In the email, the professor mused at his disappointment. He did not believe that Katie had written the email herself. The tone simply did not sound like her. In other words, we never thought someone so pleasant would stand up for herself.

Aaron translated Riley. The email went on to note that the misspelling of her name was not his fault, as Katie, spelled with a K, is the more common spelling. The professor was a jerk. That much was obvious. But that wasn't really the point in the end. Because while the lesson was hard learned, Katie had ultimately realized that her work had never really been valued as her work.

As a lower middle class student trying to work her way through college, Katie hadn't been aware of the traditions of the gentry. But now her eyes were open. She had [00:39:00] unwittingly taken on the role of Michelangelo's apprentice, contributing countless hours of talent and labor toward the professor's honor and authority.

She doubted that Sally May would accept honor and authority as her monthly minimum payment. She determined to work her way forward, unwilling to donate her time, talent, and labor to prop up the legacy of architecture's top names.

Jake Rudin: If you enjoyed this episode of Redlines, subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast streaming service. Don't forget to check out the show notes for relevant links, resources, and other information related to today's story that we hope will help you in your own journey. If you want to hear more of these stories, consider supporting us as an Out of Architecture Patreon subscriber, where you'll have access to exclusive Out of Architecture content, our private community, and more.

Erin Pellegrino: And if you or someone you know has a story that you'd like to hear on an episode of Redlines, please send us an [00:40:00] email with a summary at redlines at outofarchitecture. com. Thanks for listening.