Last week I spent a moment walking the job site.
Doesn’t sound like much, but this was a new experience for me.
In the past I’ve always been the architect, so I was escorted by the contractor as we walked the project. But now I am the Owner, so the contractor told me to enjoy my stroll and went back to their work.
Walking the site by myself was an unexpectedly contemplative activity. It’s just starting. The building pad has been set with a few of the footings poured. Rebar sticking up everywhere. There were a few earthwork guys in massive machines scraping down the new parking lot to get it open in a few weeks, a year before the main building is completed.
As an architect you live in a world of paper. More accurately you live in the computer, flying through the model space of your building information model. Even though I’m no longer practicing, being the owner isn’t much different except for the pesky financial spreadsheets that now take my attention before those plans and drawings.
Either way, I’ve been in paper space for the last twenty months since I joined the state public works division.
But now, here is 12 acres of disturbed land that was parking lot and desert a mere three months ago.
Dirt, rock, concrete, steel. Spray paint, stringlines, mushroom caps, formboards.
In eighteen months, this will be a new building, filled with college students earning a degree, kids at the daycare, professors crafting their lesson plans, speech pathologists honing their craft.
In eighteen months, the roll of papers that will have been my companions for three years will be frozen in storage, an archive of yesterday’s efforts.
And the men and women currently buzzing around this jobsite trailer will have moved onto another patch of desert, materializing the dreams of another owner, a different architect, another group of users.