Reaching for the Sky

By Kim Williams

	Kim Williams, age 10.

Have you ever looked at a building and thought, “I wish I could design a building like that”? That’s how I used to feel.

In the 1950s, when I was young, I lived in Houston, Texas. As I grew up, the city grew up. To me, the most exciting changes were those you could see on the skyline. One big building after another went up. When visitors came, we always took them downtown to show them the latest skyscraper.

I think that’s what made me want to be an architect. To me, those buildings actually did scrape the sky, and I wanted to have a part in building one. I used to spend hours building cities with my Lego blocks. I loved being the architect!
At first I didn’t know what it took to be an architect except that you had to be able to draw. In high school, instead of taking home economics like my friends, I took a class called drafting. There I learned how to use many different tools to draw exact plans for building things.

I was the only girl in the class, and others teased me. But I knew what I wanted to do, so I didn’t mind the jokes.

Trans-Alaska Pipeline
When I was sixteen, I found my first summer job with an engineering company. I worked in the drafting room with sixty men on one of the biggest engineering projects of our century: the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. That pipeline now carries oil south across Alaska, from oil wells near the Arctic Ocean down to the Pacific.

That summer I learned a lot about how a huge structure is designed and what it’s like to work in a team. The architect leads the team and decides what kind of structure will work best for the job. The architect also chooses the overall artistic idea for the project. Engineers, draftsmen, and many others make up the rest of the team.

As a draftsman, I learned how to turn the architects’ and engineers’ ideas into drawings. Construction workers then used my drawings to build those parts of the pipeline.

Sometimes, I learned the hard way. If a drawing wasn’t right, it had to be done over. Years later, one of my bosses from that summer said he knew that I had what it takes to succeed. He said he could tell because if he told me to start over, I just smiled and sat down to work again.

The engineers liked my work so much that they asked me to come back. I worked there for the next five summers.

During those years, I studied architecture at the University of Texas. I discovered that the best way to learn about architecture is to look at the world around me. To remember what I saw, I kept a notebook handy so I could make quick sketches.

	Kim Williams today.

Not all of my classes were easy. There weren’t very many women studying architecture at that time. And we were required to do some things that seemed to come easier to the men. For example, we had to learn how to build models, and many of the men had already spent a lot of time building model ships and airplanes when they were young.

The Way Up
After I graduated from college, I set out to make my dream come true. I moved to New York City, where I became one of many young people who hoped to find jobs as apprentice architects.

My summers in the engineering office really paid off. Thanks to my drawing skills, I soon landed my first job. It wasn’t very glamorous, not at all as I had imagined it would be. As the youngest person on the staff, I had to do all the things no one else wanted to do—like design the bathrooms!

But one by one I was given more exciting jobs. After I had worked as an apprentice for five years, I took the test to earn my license as a registered architect.

Once I had my license, I was hired to work for a famous architect, Philip Johnson. And I learned how small the world is: one of the skyscrapers I worked on was built in Houston. Now when I go home to visit my family, I see the building that I worked on, and I feel that my dream has come true.

Becoming an Architect
Here are some things you can do to see if you would like to be an architect.

Draw a Room
Draw a plan of your room. Don’t forget to show where the doors and windows are! Next, draw in each piece of furniture. Experiment by drawing different arrangements of your furniture. When you color it in, you will have completed your first architectural drawing.

Sketch Buildings
Do a quick sketch from memory of the outside of your school or house. Then compare your drawing with the real thing. Now sketch the building as you look at it. See how much more you notice about it now?

Compare Details
Collect picture postcards of your favorite structures. You’ll begin to notice the differences among buildings that were built for different purposes. (How is a theater different from a bank?) And you’ll begin to see differences among structures built in various climates. (Why do houses in the Northeast need sloped roofs?)

Even if you don’t want to be an architect, I hope you’ll try these suggestions. They’ll help you see the world as architects do.