Life of an Architect Bob Borson and Andrew Hawkins

This will be the 5th time in 5,209 days that I have put my opinions about taking on extra work outside of your normal job and typically during ridiculous hours of the day and night. This practice has come to be known as “moonlighting” and depending on your age and where you are at in your career, it is either the light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train. Andrew and I originally had something else scheduled for today’s show but this topic has been forcing itself into my brain over the past month or so and I want to talk about it . Welcome to EP 149: Moonlighting.



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Today we are going to be talking about moonlighting. I mentioned in the opening that in some capacity, I have brought this topic up for discussion 5 times over the past 14 years but it has never been the focus of a dedicated podcast episode. Is that irony?







answer are from a poll I presented on my Instagram account with an average of 1,200 responses per question



Fun Facts jump to 01:52



The etymology of the word “moonlight” as a verb, "hold a second job, especially at night," and this version or use came into use in 1957 (implied in the verbal noun moonlighting), from moonlighter "one who takes a second job after hours" (1954), from the notion of working by the light of the moon. Earlier the verb had been used to mean "commit crimes at night" (1882), from moonlighter in reference to members of organized bands that carried on agrarian outrages in Ireland.



Did you know there was a phrase called “sunlighting” which is in obvious contrast to the word “moonlighting? “Sunlighting,” as the term indicates, is work done outside the company—but with complete transparency and within the boundaries of what is allowed by professional ethics and individual conscience. sunlighting is considered ethical because it is done transparently after work hours and does not conflict with the employee's obligations to their primary employer.



The names suggest that moonlighting is done after hours and without the knowledge and consent of your employer while sunlighting is doing essentially the same thing with full disclosure and the approval of your employer.











Experience with Moonlighting jump to 8:39



Andrew and I have both taken on moonlighting jobs in the past, and since I don't really want to speak for Andrew, I will admit that my experiences fall into both the moonlighting  AND sunlighting categories. I've also had both positive AND negative experiences. One of the things I tried hard to convey in today's episode is that I can see both sides of the argument of why moonlighting takes place, it's value to the individuals, and the benefits that can happen as a result of the extra experience and, and lets be completely blunt about this, the extra money. I bought my first house with moonlighting money ... and the client on that job also stiffed me on my completely reasonable  bill (I worked without asking for immediate payment for services rendered until the business was up and running and to this date, almost 30 years later, they have never paid me ... I should let it go but it provides an extremely valuable life lesson).











Side Effects of Moonlighting jump to 15:58



Originally this was going to be a list of pros and cons, but the pro list was short and incredibly easy to identify. Our conversation on the cons was really about the ramifications - or side effects - or taking on moonlighting work. Without any real effort, the first things that came to mind are:





Exhaustion

Burnout

Decreased productivity

You check the time and realize that you have 4 minutes before your next meeting. Maybe it’s an internal meeting, maybe clients are coming in. Is it in person or online? Depending on how you answer those questions, time to start scrambling so that you are where you need to be and have the information required to make this meeting a good use of your time. But guess what? I promise that you will end up waiting on someone … maybe you are that someone. Either way, you aren’t getting that time back and you haven’t even started yet. Welcome to EP 148: Meetings are a Waste of Time



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I wrote a post on this topic 11 years ago – and it was also titled “Meetings are a Waste of time.” When I wrote this down as a topic, it wasn’t because I had already covered this topic a decade ago, it was because I had forgotten that I had covered it and I most likely had just come out of a meeting that I felt was an unproductive waste of time. Is this going to be a crabby podcast episode? It’s entirely possible, but you can hit the pause button, go grab a beer, and then restart the show because I feel like most people feel like I do when it comes to the majority of meetings they attend.



I am becoming more and more sensitive to sitting in meetings where I think:



What am I doing in this meeting?



You already said that, move on …



What does that have to do with what we are supposed to be talking about?



I went back to reread that post from 2013 and as I went through the points, I typically thought to myself “Nailed It” but things are a little different for me now and shockingly, I thought I was in a lot of meetings before, I am in ten times that number now. It’s not even close!



A couple of caveats to consider:



There is a huge difference between professional environment meetings and volunteer organization meetings, Meetings with Clients, and internal meetings. Along with those distinctions comes a slightly different pain threshold for what is acceptable behavior or not. While I would like volunteer meetings to be run with the same efficiency, I have to acknowledge that these are "volunteer" based meetings and if the people attending have to do something as part of their real jobs, I am not going to get in their way.



Probably 50% of the time I spend in meetings isn’t scheduled. My office (air quotes) is pretty open and it lends itself to pop-in meetings – which was purposeful at the time of design. Exactly what is supposed to happen DOES in fact happen, but it does become disruptive to developing any sort of rhythm to the creative process.



Client meetings generally fall outside of the requirements I considered, unless I am the one who is slowing things down – which does happen. I wrote in the 2013 post the following:



“At least half of the meetings I attend, nothing is really happening other than the swapping of stories. One on hand, that’s okay because I’m the Pecos Bill of stories, but I simply don’t have the time for it anymore.”



So in an effort to reclaim some lost time, here are some tips I have collected and follow to help make sure that my days don’t get longer by sitting in unnecessary or gratuitous meetings.











Start your meetings on time jump to 17:39

If someone is late, that’s their problem. Don’t review information that’s already been covered. I make it an effort to be on time to meetings and it drives me insane when someone else is late and I have to just sit there waiting on them. Not only a waste of time, it’s disrespectful – it says “my time is more important than yours”.

How good do you need to be at drawing if you want to become an architect? Or … How can I be an architect – I can’t draw? Is there an easy answer to these questions? Of course there is, but that doesn’t mean the getting is easy.

Tracking productivity, Bucket list vacation, Leadership styles, and Learning how to Draw Details ... We answer these questions and more today on Ep 146: Ask the Show Spring 2024

If you have ever wondered what Delegated Design and Design Assist mean and how the distinction between the two could impact you and your liability and responsibility then this is a good resource of information as we break it down and discuss it in fairly simple terms.

From a design standpoint, some things are just cooler than other things – and these things don’t need to be justified to anyone because people either understand it or they don’t … but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an interesting and amazing story behind these objects that might contribute to their coolness in a meaningful way. Today Andrew and I each selected three items and we are going to share with you some amazing stories …  Welcome to EP 144: Objects of Design



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Today we are going to share with you something we feel is meaningful to us and why, maybe, it should be meaningful to you. Rather than making this a list of things we like – and by extension – things we think you should like as well, we are going to dig a bit deeper and talk about the story behind each item we discuss today. In a sense, it’s that story that should make today’s podcast interesting … just that fact that WE think it’s interesting probably isn’t good enough, so we are stepping up our game.



The rules are simple – Andrew and I were each tasked with identifying a handful of items that we think are worthy of being labeled “Objects of Design” and we are going to present them in an alternating fashion. We are going to be keeping score because, at the end, I want my list to be better than Andrew’s list.







Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier (image credit here) CC by SA 3.0 Deed



Villa Savoye jump to



I am starting my list today with a building – one that architects, fans of architecture, and French people should all be familiar with … Villa Savoye, a modernist villa designed by Charles-Edouart Jeanneret-Gris, better known as “Le Corbusier” and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret located just outside Paris, France in the town of Poissey. It was built out of reinforced concrete between 1928 and 1931. The villa was designed for Pierre and Eugenie Savoye as a country home but the reality is that they barely lived there, but I’ll get to that in a moment.



I visited this building in the Fall of 1990 after having become quite familiar with the work as a result architectural history classes and quite honestly, even though it was not the popular still of architecture at the time, I really enjoyed Le Corbusier’s work, not so much some of his ideas on Urban planning.



But to really get to the interesting part of this particular project, we have to go back to 1927 when the League of Nations rejected the modern building that Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret proposed for its headquarters. To say Le Corbusier was disappointed would be an understatement and this moment became a jumping off point that led to Le Corbusier forming the International Congresses of Modern Architecture in 1928. Another Swiss from Zurich, Siegfried Giedion, who was trained as an Engineer, attended the Bauhaus School where he met Walter Gropius and formed his initial interest and opinions on the modern architecture movement, was the Secretary of the International Congress of Modern Architecture and he, along with Le Corbusier wrote the Working Programme of the congress and formulated the text of the declaration. This program would eventually be distilled into the 5 principals  of architecture that I will mention in a



Just from that standpoint, Gideon plays an important role into what Villa Savoye is at its essence but he actually continued to play a role in the building as well as its salvage from destruction.



So it’s now September 1928 and Le Corbusier has taken on the commission of Villa Savoye. It is called that, maybe obviously because it was the summer house for Pierre and Eugénie Savoye.