Tools of the Old Trade - And Loving Lessons from My Father

Somebody brought a vinyl record player to the office yesterday, which brought back a flood of great childhood memories. But most importantly, it reminded of the old manual drafting trade I still love, and even more, of the great lessons my father taught me and how much I love him. I wanted to rush and write this while we, my father and I, are still both alive. Do not worry. He is as healthy as can be, a vibrant 85+ year older. But life is so unpredictable. The mortality rate is a 100% and part of the beauty of life is you never really know how or when it will end, for each of us. So I will probably need to come and edit this soon... because I write this in the spur-of-the-moment.

The memories started by looking at the record player and remembering my family had a very similar but bigger and more complex stereo system. It had a device so you could stack several records and they would play sequentally. To make a long story short, the dropping mechanism stopped working and I ended up taking it all apart and fixing the problem. I think a spring was disengaged. Unfortunately, I ended up with a couple of spare parts. I think it was two or three screws. I was told not to mess with experiment with expensive or delicate equipment again.

My father always had a drafting office in all the houses we lived in. Therefore, I grew up with ready access to drafting tools such as straight edges, french curves, templates, Leroy lettering machines, pens, pencils, lead holders, drafting paper and film, and Mayline or similar drafting boards. I also remember taking apart ink pens like the ones shown above. The orange one, which I show disassembled, is one of the thickest ones available. The thinner ones look like super fine hair and they are very delicate. I remember ruining a couple of them during my early childhood, and never ever being "punished" for it. I really appreciate this because I learned, in the process, how to clean and maintain these type of pens, something that became useful when I went to work, while I was an Electrical Engineering student at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, at Carl Chapman & Associates, a Civil Engineering and Surveying firm in West LA and similar architectural and surveying firms.

This reminds me of how the best way to learn something is to usually just do it. Some skills you can read about, but you have to do them, over and over. Some skills, are also like "low-hanging-fruit," which is the type of skill I want to make sure everyone I teach or help knows. There are also some skills that I would term, "I cannot or do not want to live without them." I like to make sure I share those, too. My father never formally taught much drafting or design. But he allowed me to watch him and other designers at work, and I was allowed to ask questions. By the time I was about twelve years old, I was able to work "professionally" as a draftsman. In that epoch, a lot of drafting work was simply tracing floor plans for other trades to use. The other skill that was at a premium was calligraphy. You were required to write legibly and in a manner that was hard to distinguish from the target standard, either engineering lettering that looked like Leroy templates, or more artsy "architectural font" look.

It was and it still is a joy to sketch and draw by hand on paper, or even on my Samsung Note mobile phone. However, in the ensuing decades, it has become a wasteful luxury. Digital methods are just so much better, easier, and faster. Please do not be offended, but in comparison, they require much less real talent. I remember being part of the transition from manual to 2D CAD methods. I also remember being a part of the early transition to 3D, to smart AEC parametric objects, BIM, programmatically driven workflows, etc. The question still remains, "How do you get people to try something new and hopefully better?" One possible method, if you can afford it, is to simply work side by side, simultaneously and compare outcomes. Ideally, you do this in a friendly, supportive environment, where the idea is to find the best possible method, and see what appeals to everyone. Ideally you reach a consensus where we all say, "We cannot or do not want to live without this joyful manner of working!" Or even better, "We cannot afford not to embrace this new proven and tested way!"

This also reminds me of the question, "What is better, the teaching office or the working university?" Unfortunately, I no longer see examples of colleges or universities who use student work as a means to produce professional results. It is possible. It has happened. There may be labor laws now prohibiting it. But in short, I think there is nothing like getting paid while you learn. And that is something that always continues to happen no matter where we go, even beyond graduation and licensing or certification. We are always learning, ideally, on purpose.

The final lesson my father clearly taught me, and continues to teach me, is how there is always a better way to do something. There is also always a better way to improve a design. Every time I have approached him and shown him something I am proud of on a project I may be working on, I know he's immediately going to jump into, "How can we make this better?" mode. It has been exciting, in the last three decades, to see how just when we think we are getting efficient in one workflow, a much dramatically better one comes along. Digital tools are such a joy to use because traditional, manual methods could never compete.

But there are many other ways to approach AEC projects that each show more ways to optimize or improve the processes and results. You can make things be more constructable. You can improve the sequencing. You can make a design more pleasant and user-friendly. You can use more eco-friendly or sustainable materials. The list never ends.

I believe one of the ways the AEC industry can improve is by removing the borders that separate different trades, and unifying them. I also know there are major legal and contractual challenges making this a challenge. However, an "Integrated Project Delivery" method provides so many opportunities for improvements. For one, we all get to feel more that "We are all in this together!" It never ceases to amaze me how large and complex projects come together. So many things can go sour. However, in an environment where everyone is looking out for everybody else's backs, it is much easier to find errors in advance of construction and ways to improve layouts, sequences or techniques, when we are accessing all the brain power available. Perhaps the best architect happens to be working for the MEP division. Talent and experience know no traditional boundaries.

What do you think is the best way to encourage new users to adopt better technology?