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pegkerrI have prepared an initial list of questions for Inga, my expert architect. Can you think of any I should add? Please look over this list, and chime in with anything else you think I should ask her. I will wait until tomorrow evening to hear from people, and then e-mail her. Here is the text of the e-mail I plan to send her:
Thank you for agreeing to give me some of your time in answering questions. I think I will start by telling you a little about the book I've planned, and then some of the questions I have.
This will be a fantasy novel set in Minneapolis/St. Paul, one which comes up for magical reasons for why Minnesota is the way that it is (including magical reasons for such things as ice fishing, the fishing opener, the duck hunting opener, the State Fair, the Aquatennial, the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the Heart of the Beast May Day festival, mosquitoes, etc.) My protagonist, Solveig, is an architect, who works for a firm that has landed the bid to build the next St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace.
Solveig: She is in her late twenties or early thirties. She is the single mother of a six year old girl named Ingrid. Ingrid's father is not involved in their lives. Solveig is a very bright and ambitious young woman who is a good architect, and is recognized as a rising young star in her firm. She tends to be rather introverted. Her Myers-Briggs score (if you're familiar with it) is ISTJ.
Agnes is Solveig's mother and Ingrid's grandmother. Agnes is a widow–-Solveig's father died years ago when he rescued Solveig in a skating accident (she had fallen through thin ice on Lake Nokomis). Agnes is a professor of Nordic studies at Augsburg College, but she is on sabbatical this year, doing research as she provides daycare for Ingrid.
The book takes place during the course of a year, from roughly Memorial Day weekend, when the firm announces that they have won the ice palace bid, until early May of the following year.
I'm trying to flesh out Solveig's background a bit. Here are some of the questions I need to have answered to start building her character:
1. What might Solveig's educational background be? She would have gone to a good school with stringent admission requirements, as she is very smart and willing to work hard. I am ignorant of whether architects start straight out of college (with a bachelor's degree), or need to get graduate school accreditation to begin working.
2. I'm going to ask you to generalize a little. Every profession has a certain stereotypical "type": actors are thought to be extroverts, lawyers are verbal, construction workers like to work with their hands, etc. How would you generalize about architects in general, and young woman architects in particular?
3. Generalizing again: what are the most annoying characteristics of architects when they're at their worst? (Too fussy/anal-retentive about details? Stubborn? Or????)
4. Generalizing again: fill in the following sentences:
Architects love __________________.
Architects are annoyed by ______________.
Architects hate ___________________.
Architects are afraid of ______________.
Architects cannot possibly bring themselves to be interested in ________________.
5. What kind of schedule might Solveig keep if she is working full time? (e.g., how many hours a week might she work, and when? Weekends, nights, etc?) What does she expect her career path to be, if all goes well? (e.g., she can expect to become a partner in three years if they like her work, or she can expect to start handling clients directly, or she would be required by the firm to start finding clients of her own?) What is her annual income?
6. Are there any cultural things about architects you can tell me about, their customs or their slang? (I am ignorant about architects in the wild, so to speak, in their native habitat.) Examples of the sort of thing I'm looking for from other professions: actors have a superstition that they must never say the name of the play "MacBeth" but instead call it "the Scottish play." Construction workers put a Christmas tree on the top of a building when they are building it. Photographers call the point-and-click type cameras "Ph.D.'s for "Push here, dummy."
7. I am planning to have the firm announce that they've won the ice palace bid approximately six months before they build it, and hold an open house to show off their design. Does this sound reasonable? What might a party of this sort be like?
8. How are architecture firms structured? Partners mentoring associates? Are only architects part of the firm, or are engineers members, too? I'm particularly wondering whether the structural engineer who will be working on the ice palace along with Solveig is also a firm employee, or is he more likely to be an employee of a different company, something like an engineering consulting firm?
9. At the end of the day, when architects go out for a drink after work (or wherever architects gather) what do they discuss when talking shop?
10. What is the ratio, generally, of male to female architects? Would Solveig have been likely to have encountered much sexism, either at her school or at work?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Peg
Thank you for agreeing to give me some of your time in answering questions. I think I will start by telling you a little about the book I've planned, and then some of the questions I have.
This will be a fantasy novel set in Minneapolis/St. Paul, one which comes up for magical reasons for why Minnesota is the way that it is (including magical reasons for such things as ice fishing, the fishing opener, the duck hunting opener, the State Fair, the Aquatennial, the St. Paul Winter Carnival, the Heart of the Beast May Day festival, mosquitoes, etc.) My protagonist, Solveig, is an architect, who works for a firm that has landed the bid to build the next St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace.
Solveig: She is in her late twenties or early thirties. She is the single mother of a six year old girl named Ingrid. Ingrid's father is not involved in their lives. Solveig is a very bright and ambitious young woman who is a good architect, and is recognized as a rising young star in her firm. She tends to be rather introverted. Her Myers-Briggs score (if you're familiar with it) is ISTJ.
Agnes is Solveig's mother and Ingrid's grandmother. Agnes is a widow–-Solveig's father died years ago when he rescued Solveig in a skating accident (she had fallen through thin ice on Lake Nokomis). Agnes is a professor of Nordic studies at Augsburg College, but she is on sabbatical this year, doing research as she provides daycare for Ingrid.
The book takes place during the course of a year, from roughly Memorial Day weekend, when the firm announces that they have won the ice palace bid, until early May of the following year.
I'm trying to flesh out Solveig's background a bit. Here are some of the questions I need to have answered to start building her character:
1. What might Solveig's educational background be? She would have gone to a good school with stringent admission requirements, as she is very smart and willing to work hard. I am ignorant of whether architects start straight out of college (with a bachelor's degree), or need to get graduate school accreditation to begin working.
2. I'm going to ask you to generalize a little. Every profession has a certain stereotypical "type": actors are thought to be extroverts, lawyers are verbal, construction workers like to work with their hands, etc. How would you generalize about architects in general, and young woman architects in particular?
3. Generalizing again: what are the most annoying characteristics of architects when they're at their worst? (Too fussy/anal-retentive about details? Stubborn? Or????)
4. Generalizing again: fill in the following sentences:
Architects love __________________.
Architects are annoyed by ______________.
Architects hate ___________________.
Architects are afraid of ______________.
Architects cannot possibly bring themselves to be interested in ________________.
5. What kind of schedule might Solveig keep if she is working full time? (e.g., how many hours a week might she work, and when? Weekends, nights, etc?) What does she expect her career path to be, if all goes well? (e.g., she can expect to become a partner in three years if they like her work, or she can expect to start handling clients directly, or she would be required by the firm to start finding clients of her own?) What is her annual income?
6. Are there any cultural things about architects you can tell me about, their customs or their slang? (I am ignorant about architects in the wild, so to speak, in their native habitat.) Examples of the sort of thing I'm looking for from other professions: actors have a superstition that they must never say the name of the play "MacBeth" but instead call it "the Scottish play." Construction workers put a Christmas tree on the top of a building when they are building it. Photographers call the point-and-click type cameras "Ph.D.'s for "Push here, dummy."
7. I am planning to have the firm announce that they've won the ice palace bid approximately six months before they build it, and hold an open house to show off their design. Does this sound reasonable? What might a party of this sort be like?
8. How are architecture firms structured? Partners mentoring associates? Are only architects part of the firm, or are engineers members, too? I'm particularly wondering whether the structural engineer who will be working on the ice palace along with Solveig is also a firm employee, or is he more likely to be an employee of a different company, something like an engineering consulting firm?
9. At the end of the day, when architects go out for a drink after work (or wherever architects gather) what do they discuss when talking shop?
10. What is the ratio, generally, of male to female architects? Would Solveig have been likely to have encountered much sexism, either at her school or at work?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Peg
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(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-06 07:49 pm (UTC)K.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-06 08:00 pm (UTC)Architects are annoyed by ______________.
Architects hate ___________________.
Architects are afraid of ______________.
Architects cannot possibly bring themselves to be interested in ________________.
I was just noticing that only one of these is positive, and the others are all negative. Might there be more positive-themed questions that could be useful, or will you gain more information about them by knowing what they avoid?
Otherwise, I'm impressed by the scope of your questions - not just the training, but the actual day to day aspects of the job and the related sociological bits. Do you need to know about the tools and environment they use to do their actual work? Different types of pencils or CAD (computer aided drafting) programs? Proportion of computer vs paper work? Or will you not be focussing too much on the actual means they use to achieve their designs? I know they will have already won the bid, but does that mean all that sort of work will already be done? (I don't know the process either; just asking.)
I liked seeing the composite overview of your proposed story. Good to remember the basics again. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-07 01:22 pm (UTC)You said: She is the single mother of a six year old girl named Ingrid. Ingrid's father is not involved in their lives.
How does raising a small child involve itself in the partnership? Could a partnership sponsor childcare? Previously? How would the finances of being a partner/associate support a single mother? Are the social links of the business accessible to single mothers? Would children be allowed entry? Is there a 'dress for success'? Or perhaps an 'artist license'? I'd expect architects hange around the purchasers of their services. Where is that? How do they network out?
I expect I'm missing some things there as well. My idea(s) came from working with a professional women's group - at least half the programs were about social issues.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-11-07 02:16 pm (UTC)I think I'd ask about architectural "heroes" -- i.e., do architects have Frank Lloyd Wright calendars in their offices, or pictures of buildings that inspire them (Gaudi's Cathedral de Sagrada Familia, for example, or the Guggenheim Museum, or Arquitectonica houses)? Could give Solveig someone to "look up to".
Related to that -- what is "in style" these days for architects? (When I was in grad school for English, certain theorists and interpretations were "in" -- what's "in" for architects?)
Given Solveig's personality as described, what does Inga think she'd design for, say, a house, an office, an addition to an existing building, a museum? (Would she go traditional? Whimsical? Would she be a little daring? A lot?) And of course, the big question -- what about designing the Ice Palace?
How do architects feel about working with clients? Do they want someone who will work with them to achieve a shared vision, or would they rather design what they want and have the client say "love it"? And what about construction/engineers, what's the architect's relationship with them? (Murder Must Advertise has lots of fun playing with the advertiser vs. client thing.)
That's all I can come up with at the moment... hope it helps. :)
- Darice