David Kuykendall www.d-r-k.net

I just noticed the date on my last blog post was EXACTLY one year ago so I need to put off the excuses and say something. The last year has been tantamount to a tease. In my last post, I mentioned that I had 2 weeks to find a job or I was out. Well I found one….for about four days. It was a very promising compromise. Work 50+ hours a week for 35K a year teaching LEED workshops for a small startup. I have to admit, before going into the interview I was a little concerned knowing that the owner of this particular business was, only until recently, a Vice President at Lehman Brothers. That being said, mistakes happen, time for a new start(up). I had an interview on Monday, a job offer on Wednesday, and started on Friday. The following Wednesday, I was called into a small conference room and offered a furlough (along with everyone else that worked there). A furlough is a clever little device thought up by savvy business folk to trick lesser people. “You can stay here and work for no pay, and hopefully, maybe, somewhere WAY in the future, we might pay you again…” I made them cut me a check right there and I RAN to the bank to deposit it before they filled bankruptcy. Now don’t get me wrong, these were decent people trying to get by in this crap economy just like I was. I just mention it to preface the narrative of my year. To quote Steve Coogan in Hamlet 2, “My life is a parody of a tragedy.”

It really hasn’t been all bad. I got a bit of attention from my first few posts. I was approached by a journalist for Architect magazine for an interview. She was writing a piece about capable, yet unemployed architects in America. It was short and sweet and I was surprised how many people saw it. (I’m still miffed about getting bumped off the cover by that skinny girl.) I’m sure it surprised none of my friends that I would gain exposure by having done absolutely nothing. I was also approached by the artist James Morrison to create a piece for his show Space is the Place #9: Fuck Architecture. He was looking for architects to comment on the particular state of the field through a work of “art”. I thought about it for a bit and ended up pasting in chronological order every cover letter I had sent to every job posting or architectural firm in the past year. 175 pages pasted to a wall spanning 25’X4.5’.

I was very excited about this show. I felt very fancy being a boy from Arkansas having a piece of art shown in New York City (even though it was in Brooklyn). I will be the first to say the piece was bad. I didn’t really care. I was showing it. It made me feel giddy. That was, until people began to show up. I realized that people were actually going to be reading these! My stomach sank. My entire life over a period of one year wrinkling and flapping because of the crap tape and crap paper I had used. Perhaps it was appropriate. It looked dull and contrived, which is exactly how the cover letters read. My friend, Noah, had a jolly good time pointing out all my spelling errors, and there was a series of about 12 letters I had sent to different firms and craigslist posting where I had left in another firm’s name in the body of the letter.

I did find some work, however. I bit the bullet and did an unpaid internship for a small architecture studio in the Lower East Side. I could go on and on about the ethical problems involved with that, but let’s face it; ethics go out the window when there is a giant gaping hole in your resume. The work was fun and engaging, and after a few months I began to work on some projects that would actually get me paid. The work, however, tapered off, and I began to go a few weeks without working. After the beginning of the year, I began to go a month or two without work from there. Now, it’s the beginning of June, and I find myself almost exactly where I was a year ago. I’m not quite as naked, but I am definitely feeling the chill.

But I won’t leave it there. There are lessons learned. There is light at the end of the tunnel. I have a few things cooking, a few stones unturned (or at least ones I turned over awhile back so something could have crawled in there since I last checked.) I usually like to pipe my optimism at the end here into some kind of architectural criticism or reference…but nothing comes to mind. The sun is shining. Summer is here, and I have a sunburn.

Alright, considering the interesting responses I got from my last blog, I thought I would try to expand on my current situation, and see if I can’t spew out some semblance to others in the same boat. I’ve just had a conversation with my landlord on the subject (only slightly more optimistic), so I should be able to frame my mind.

It’s official. I have 2 weeks to find an income, or this bouncing, bubbly, queer intellectual gets packed up and shipped back to Arkansas (judgments reserved, it is home). What the hell have I done here?!? My time for creative job hunting is at its end. I have molded and reshaped my image to try and be the ideal candidate for whatever random position I was applying for so many times, I really can’t remember what I enjoy doing or what I excel at. Not lied, mind you, but there were times where I was standing on my head saying the alphabet backwards, while painting the ceiling with my toes. I have auditioned to be a television host for a renovation show (which I totally bombed, by the way). I have tramped around angry strangers’ apartments with a tape measure, and I have designed some pretty cool T-shirts for an ambitious documentary trying to shed light on studio culture and how these people, through this process, can begin to shape our built environment (the buttons are coming, guys . Oh, and I blog on occasion. However, the time has come where I cast out my pride and get my hands dirty. It isn’t that I’m against waiting tables or bartending. It’s that I’m terrified that actors or other artists have WAY more experience in that arena, and I am simply not qualified. On top of a pile of complaints I could throw at the academic field of architecture, there simply isn’t time to slave away 80+ hours a week in studio and hold down a job, thusly gain the experience necessary to thwart an economic attack. I have to admit, I do know a few people that managed this, but they are mutants and shall not fall into the normal realm of social reality.

My head shot for the audition (don’t laugh)

Today I sent a very elaborate cover letter to a film production company looking for a receptionist. I actually got pretty excited about it while writing it. I probably scared the shit out of them actually, but, none the less, it was passionate. As I was writing my prescribed bullshit, I found myself actually believing it. I started out by admitting that I had gone into architecture school with the intention of going into film production for grad school (true, by the way). I began rambling about how I wanted to be Tim Burton and, to quote myself, “design and construct interesting, complex, and fantastical environments.” I went on to say “As I continued, however, I began to develop a passionate understanding of our built environment. Recently, times have been tough in the architectural field and I have opted to try applying my skills outside of the profession. Naturally, I came right back to my passion for film.” LIE! I’m broke. It did remind me, however, that that is actually what I wanted to do.

During my entire stretch in architecture school (8 years, don’t judge) my mind was twisted and warped to form a perception of the world in a different more analytical (already went into cynical) manner. I had forgotten, actually, what I really wanted to do. I really don’t think it came back to me until last summer at the Radiohead concert. Honestly! I forgot that I wanted to go into film at all!

Last summer, actually almost exactly a year ago, I had the opportunity to see Radiohead’s In Rainbows concert in Dallas, TX. I loved it so much, I went to see them again when they played here at Liberty Park. Yes, I love Radiohead, they are awesome, blah blah blah, the real reason I went to see them again was for their stage design. It was absolutely amazing! I felt like Jodi Foster staring at the cosmos, “no….words….should have sent…a…poet.”

If you were not one of the sublime many that had the opportunity to witness this, allow me to attempt to explain. The stage is your typical huge-ass concert festival stage. From the ceiling, hung an array of very long narrow bars, in a grid about 12 across and 6 or so deep. Imagine pins stuck into foam in a grid only the pins are about 35′ long and 8″ wide and are actually SUPER-wide aspect LCD screens hanging over the band. The band didn’t take up the entire area under the bars; in the middle the bars were shortened to provide a space for the performers.

The screens, however, were not used initially. The band went through a couple of songs before teasing you with their awesome new toy. After a good work up, and the band was really going, they really started exploring the potential of this array. Imagine a 3 dimensional object floating over the heads of the band, but you can only perceive the object through its movement when it would come into contact with the location of the bars. It created a fragmented demarcation of an object through movement, while coordinating with the composition of the band. It of course wasn’t this simple of an exhibition, forms winding and contorting and falling completely out of shape at the same time. Instances of form and depth through layering colors and movement were collapsing in on themselves just as new configurations were being perceived. I almost cried (there was a beer tent at the concert). Anyways, it got me so excited about this concept of space and spectacle and sensory exploration. Why isn’t Times Square like this?!?! Beautiful, elegant, flashy, and SPATIAL! My mind was reeling, and is now as I reflect back on it. I know that a job as a receptionist is a far cry from being a set designer for an international band of awesomness, but what the hell! If it pays…

As I sit around waiting for a reply to the over 100 resumes I’ve sent out in the past week, I find myself becoming cynical.  The study of architecture instilled a degree of cynicism within me, but it replaced that loss of innocence with a great appreciation for detail and process. Lately, however, I feel that this downward economy has cast an ugly, unflattering light on the profession. Understandably, architecture is not a “recession-proof” profession, but the current times have reinforced in my mind just how the rest of the world sees us, fat to be trimmed, and lately, I’m starting to identify with them.

I graduated from architecture school last May planning on going where the wind took me. I breezed on in to New York, not desperate to find a job, because I knew one would come to me. Initially, I wasn’t desperate to find a job because nothing really inspired me architecturally, and I was more than satisfied playing NYC for a while. Did I want to work for a huge firm that would pay well where I could be done by 6:00pm, but be bored to death, or did I want to work for the starving idealist that would pay me scraps and over work me, but be left with a sense that my creative “itch” was being scratched? At the time, none of these seemed acceptable, but I look back now at these questions as decadent and luxurious. Now I’m begging the firms pumping out mini-malls to take me on for a free trial period, or what the lady on Good Morning America describes as “externships,” according to the link my mother sent me.

Why am I not inspired? Despite my current state of rambling, I’m generally very easily impressed, and I have an almost annoying sense of optimism. I think, with the exception of very few, I am just bored with buildings. Ideas on architecture always got me going, but no one seems to build very many of those anymore. So what else is there? Architecture is supposedly the last great “generalist” profession, but the skill set I graduated with has been tailored to the design office. There are many fields I would love to branch out into that would indeed build on my current skills and training such as television, film, and writing, but holy crap! You though architects had it bad!

Architecture isn’t recession-proof because: 1. buildings are “effing” expensive, and 2. nobody likes us (nobody that has to deal with us professionally anyways). Therefore you have to be clear on exactly what it is you’re selling and how this benefits whoever it is that is buying it. Businesses generally are concerned as to their appearance in the city and their impact in it; however, developers could give a rat’s ass as to the long term investment of a project. It has to look nice long enough for them to turn it around. That doesn’t provide a lot of room for the architect’s responsibility to the public and to the city. Why am I going into this? I have no idea, but buried in there somewhere is the problem I have with our built environment. I think it’s with how money is the starting point in the design process. I had the opportunity to hear Olivero Toscani speak at the International Design Forum in Dubai in 2007, and he made this point very clear, “Creativity comes from freedom, but design comes from money.”

So, what is there to get excited about? Well, being a freelance architect (unemployed), I have had the opportunity to drift about in seemingly luxurious ways of wasting time, namely art. Not making my own, mind you, but looking at other people’s seemingly luxurious wastes of time. Okay, that’s not fair, but you know what I mean. I have made the most out of my MoMA membership, going 8 or 9 times in the past year, and recently I made it around to several of the galleries around Chelsea. I was shocked! One of the galleries, I swear, was larger than the Whitney. I found myself getting more excited about the spaces rather than the art. I enjoy video installations, but in no way admit to providing meaningful insight into any of them. I suspect half the reason is due to the quality of art itself, but to be honest, I have a genuine attraction to shiny, flashing things. Anyways, most of the spaces were very simple warehouses, but transformed somehow in their vastness by placing these objects within them. One gallery in particular stands out in my mind. Each floor was completely open, all the windows were blacked out, and the only light came from the reflected images on the screen. It was beautiful. It felt timeless and simple within each space and each person viewing the pieces became another composition of frozen objects within the space. People became dark silhouettes frozen against the large moving images, spread apart throughout the space then shift from one screen to the next, one at a time. None of this gets me any closer to finding employment, but at least I can start to remember why I love architecture so much.