ArchDaily Comes Calling
A year and a half into being full time with Squaremoon Studio, I was delighted one day last week to find that my recent project (Sanctuary) and essay about sacred space had been picked up by ArchDaily. First some context…
Working at Dynia Architects, we knew we had a great design product and were anxious to get it in front of people to attract more work. It wasn’t easy, even though pretty much every architect in Wyoming knew that Dynia was the top of the architect class and routinely walked away with most of the design awards. We won a lot of local and regional awards, but it was hard to get the national press and attention we wished for. It came, about twenty years into the firm’s life. ArchDaily seemingly discovered us just about the time I left the firm. Still, it was nice to see projects I labored over featured on big national and international sites like ArchDaily, Dezeen, and others.
So it seemed like a strange anomoly when just weeks after leaving the firm I submitted an essay to Dezeen that they picked up. They are based in London and cover architecture and design. That essay was a snarky “review” of a certain developer politician’s lack of taste in design, but it hit a spot and was widely read throughout the architecture world at the time. Then I settled in to the hard work of building up my own work history.
This summer I wrote an essay on a serious architectural topic that expressed my latest views on what has been a lifelong interest…sacred space. Being serious and not sensational, I figured it would be hard to find interested readers, but thanks to some connections and recent experiences, it was viewed by the right people and picked up by Common Edge, a national architecture website devoted to bringing relevant architectural topics to interested readers. It was a huge honor and great break for my young firm.
Two days later, I discovered that the article had been republished by ArchDaily. Maybe with the context I’ve shared, you can see why that’s a big deal. If you search for Utah on ArchDaily, you find a few projects from recent years, and that one time when the big names did a competition in Park City that was never built. So it’s a big deal, and I knew it because I had chased it for so many years with the excellent work of my previous firm. It was an honor to be on Common Edge because it’s a serious national publication. Apparently Common Edge has an agreement with ArchDaily that they can repost articles periodically. Whatever the path, it was a huge break and amazing exposure for my writing and my project - and a boost in fighting my way up to where I know my firm should be. (We’re coming!)