The $34,000 Question

Intern architects weigh the creative rewards of their profession against its financial drawbacks.

Continued from page 1

“Those who are destined to be architects and are committed will be a success, no matter what. Money won't keep them out,” Simpson says. But low salaries are indeed a barrier to recruitment and retention industrywide, he says. Anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing numbers of architecture graduates are working in computer graphics, website design, digital entertainment, real estate development, and corporate facilities management. “We are losing talented grads to other industries because the pay scales are relatively low,” Simpson explains. “When you consider school loans and the cost of living, and trying to start a family, pay is clearly a factor.”

That financial realization often comes after the internship, a time when freshly minted architects still regard the profession as exciting. “When you get out of school, you aren't paid much, but there is a social and intellectual milieu that is fun,” notes Charles Thanhauser, principal of TEK Architects in New York City, a firm with 15 architects. “But after a few years, [young architects] find it is difficult to earn a living, and they start leaving the profession.” An architect with 10 years' experience can expect to earn from $62,608 to $79,919, ARCHITECT's survey indicates. The mean high salary for architects with 15 years' experience jumps to $96,928.

T.J. Gottesdiener, a managing partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), also sees architects getting the itch to leave seven or 10 years into their careers. At this later stage, Gottesdiener explains, when architects may be buying houses and having children, “they see peers from school who are lawyers and hedge-fund managers, and what these people are earning, and they wonder what they are doing.”

Before they arrive at this midcareer quandary, SOM closely mentors its interns, says Gottesdiener, encouraging them to present their own ideas. Interns are also included in client meetings, “so they can see the impact of what they are doing,” he says.

Looking back on their internships, successful midcareer architects regard the experience as a rite of passage, the value of which became more apparent over time. David Ling, 48, principal of a small, eponymous New York practice, worked with I.M. Pei on the Bank of China building in Hong Kong for two years in the early 1980s. The experience of interning with the iconic modernist has stayed with Ling. “I apply [Pei's] level of professionalism and technical detailing,” Ling says, “and I try to apply his level of charm with my clients.”

Because the internship years are a formative period, Ling adds, “it is crucial to choose [to intern with] an architect who represents the reasons why you have answered the calling of architecture.” Ling usually has one or two interns working in his office and says he gives them freedom to develop their own ideas.

Likewise, David Hertz, who is principal of David Hertz Architects in Santa Monica, Calif., interned in the early 1980s at Frank Gehry's office in Los Angeles. He worked on projects like the California Aerospace Museum and got to know the movers and shakers in the city's emerging architecture and arts scene. After only a year, he felt so confident in his connections and experience that “[it] led me to leave the office and open my own practice,” Hertz, now 46, says.

Even with mega-salaries becoming the norm in some professions, and the sharply rising costs of real estate and college tuition, the prevailing attitude among interns—like Dana Ladd, 23, who earns $36,000 at Warner Summers Ditzel Benefield Ward & Associates in Atlanta—is that becoming an architect is more important than money. At least for now.

“Of course, it would be nice to earn more,” Ladd says. “But this is the profession I want. I look at friends with jobs in finance, and think, ‘That is really boring.' I enjoy my job.”

Ernest Beck is a New York–based freelance writer who contributes to publications including The New York Times, Worth, and SmallBiz.