Group offers shop talk to Madison architects with one-person shops

Because they can only talk to their dogs so much.

Thats just one reason a group of 10 to 12 Madison-area architects all sole practitioners, with no business partners or employees started meeting monthly in 2007 at a local coffee shop for what founder Todd Barnett describes as roundtable discussions about their business problems, strategies, tools and successes.

Member Tom McHugh, who designs furniture in addition to being an architect, was the one who made the dog joke. But all in the group say they value the interactions as a replacement for what theyd have daily with colleagues if they were employed at bigger architectural firms.

If we as individuals have kind of a big idea, this is a group that we can come to share that with, said Andrew Braman-Wanek of Gingko House Architecture. On our own, it doesnt mean a whole lot, without someone to bounce it off of. Even its a completely hypothetical idea, it can turn into a really exciting discussion about all the possibilities.

As it is, working alone out of home offices for a variety of residential and commercial clients can be too much of an echo chamber for the creative process, they said.

What this (group) did was replace that office give-and-take that when you work alone you really start to miss, said Elizabeth Cwik, the sole woman in the group. But what I like about the group is that it doesnt descend into just a gossip and complaint session which is actually what I found more of in an (outside) office. So this group actually tends to be more professional.

We talk about our projects, whats going right, whats going wrong, she added. Sometimes it just really helps to have a gut-check, with 12 people who share points of view.

Its a few minutes before 11:30 a.m. on a Wednesday in early June, and several members of the roundtable are starting to gather in a side room at Cargo Coffee on South Park Street in Madison.

This is the groups customary meeting spot and time, for about two hours of mostly casual conversation about their jobs and profession on the first Wednesday of every month.

Sometimes members mix it up a little, gathering elsewhere for guided tours of architectural interest such as the time they visited the USDAs Forest Products Laboratory to learn more about wood strengths, or the time they toured Carley, Wood Associates, the Madison craft shop that did the interior woodwork for UW-Madisons Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

See the original post:
Group offers shop talk to Madison architects with one-person shops