A friend recently loaned me Down Detour Road: An Architect in Search of Practice by Eric Cesal. In his early 30s and getting out of architectural grad school just as the economy tanks, Cesal makes some interesting observations about our jobs and our profession. One of his first observation is how come architects seemed to get laid off and/or be unemployed at much higher rates than any other profession in the U.S., even more than contractors, whose employment would seemingly depend on us. By discussing starchitects, the economy, and many other factors, he makes the point that we as a profession do a great job of defending our necessity and worthiness to other architects, but not the rest of the world.
To be fair, I'm only about a third through the book. (Two deadlines have curtailed much of my pleasure reading down to mostly flipping through a Crate & Barrel catalog while waiting for the white wine to chill.) But so far, it's quite interesting and has actually made me laugh a time or two, which is hard to do. So, have any of you read this book yet? If so, what were your thoughts?
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