The Young Architect

Progress, Volume XII, Issue 5, 1 January 1917, Page 842

The Young Architect

The great mistake made by the young architect at the beginning of his career is usually his failure to recognise that the world in which he lives is not supremely interested in architecture written with a capital letter, and has not the time or inclination to make a close and intimate examination of the architect’s qualifications. On the other hand, everyone enjoys pleasant and congenial companionship in daily life, and the architect who has lived a self-centred life of absorption in one pursuit is frequently a dull or boring companion in society. His natural anxiety as to his own future will, unless he is careful, operate directly against his chances of success, and when he obtains work he should remember that it is more to his advantage to have converted a client into a friend than to have pleased himself with the design of a building which, in any case, he will regard as a tentative effort in the future. We do not mean that he should he as wax in the hands of his client, or fail to do his utmost to produce good work, but he should avoid the mistake of overestimating the importance of what he is doing. Anxiety is an enemy to success, for the anxious man is one who spoils his own mental freshness and force in dealing with the affairs before his notice, and he will recognise that he can neither anticipate fate nor see clearly what if may bring him in the future. The greater the number of interests he has outside his own work the greater will be his chance of making friends, and on his capacity to do so will depend in a large measure his future success. —The Builder.”