I’m walking in the Walk Now for Autism walk in DC on November 8nd. Please help me support this important cause by making a donation at www.walknowforautism.org/dc/personal/charlotte.

From the event’s site:

Walk Now for Autism, the nation’s largest grassroots autism walk program, is Autism Speaks’ signature fundraising and awareness event, taking place in communities across the United States, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom. Powered by volunteers and families with loved ones on the autism spectrum, this successful grassroots fundraising effort not only generates vital funds for autism research but also raises awareness about the increasing prevalence of autism and the need for increased research funding to combat this complex disorder.

Hooray!

Rachel at Cre8d Design fixed my website! If you need help with your website, give her a nod.

So, suppose I wanted to write an autobiography. Where would I start? With my own birth? With my parents? Grandparents? So much affects who I am but the stories in my head are limited - only second hand accounts of the last two generations and a failing memory of my own experiences.

I was born in 1949, the first child from a union between a WWII Navy officer and a society girl from Houston. My father’s father had come from Germany in 1848. My mother’s family had been in this country for a long time. They met in Houston, where my father lived briefly before the war with his brother, a contractor, helping design houses. It was a time of debutant parties and tennis matches and my mother said my father, a terrific dancer, was flirtatious and handsome.

My mother was the last of 5 children, the other four considerably older than she. She was raised by nursemaids and had audiences with her parents rather than loving interactions. When I was growing up, my parents always said, “Children are to be seen and not heard.” This notion was apparently the child-raising maxim of the pre-war era, and it certainly trickled down to my psyche.

My father was the baby of a family of 6, his closest sibling being 10 years older than he. His mother was 45 and his father 65 when he was born, and my sense is that he learned to expect to get whatever he wanted. This also trickled down to my psyche.

How these things affected me is something I think about from time to time. Sometime I can see it clearly, but other times I’m sure I act how I act without even being aware of it. We humans feel so smart, knowledgeable, capable, but we are really rather unaware and imprecise.

How does one do something autobiographical? Chronologically? Interrelationally? Randomly? Who would even care to read it? The beauty of a blog is it doesn’t much matter. This is supposed to be a design blog, but what the heck. Perhaps I’ll add a little autoblog.

Some things aren’t working right on my blog and I’m trying to learn what I need to do to fix them. This is taking some time, so my apologies in the meantime.

The Generalist is dead. It pains me to say it, because I am one. I want to know about everything; I want to be good at everything. But there isn’t enough time and there is too much, way too much, information. This has really hit home since I’ve started my new design career. Taking a building or an interior relocation from start to finish is extraordinarily complex and the sheer volume of expertise and information required is astonishing. As much as I want to learn it all, I’m beginning to realize it may not be possible.

Take Thursday, for example. In the morning I did some occupancy calculations for a client who needs to obtain permission from the city for an unusual buildout. This required me to understand several sections of the International Building Code, a document not known for its clarity, to say the least. It took me hours to parse the code language until I was satisfied I’d done the calculations correctly. People build careers doing nothing but interpreting the IBC. Later, I walked through a construction site where I was involved in discussions about fire alarm wiring, carpet laying, the proper use of plastic laminate, and the lighting levels in a corridor. Each of these involved a different trade, represented on the job site by a team working only in its single trade. In the afternoon I reviewed some specifications for office cubicles. There are those whose entire job is to understand the intricacies of systems furniture. In the evening, I went to a reception at a high-end furniture showroom that employs a pack of salespeople who do nothing but deal in this furniture.

All these specialists. It makes me, the generalist, want to cry. Not because I don’t appreciate the depth of knowledge that these specialists command, but because I know I can never learn everything that all of them know.

We need all these guys. No one of us can ever learn everything all the specialists involved in a design project know and we could never build a building or refurbish an office floor without all that knowledge. Architecture and design is a business of specialists and I’d better get used to it.

Nevertheless, I’m not going to cave in and become one of them. The design business also needs people who know enough about all these different specialties to see the big picture - people who may not have the depth of knowledge that the specialists do, but who understand the various processes well enough to ensure that the results really do resolve the client’s problem or need.

The difficulty, of course, is managing the overload of information that’s available. New designers have to learn a lifetime of information in a really short time to be even passably competent, even at one specialty. Becoming a semi-expert at all the aspects of a design project is one big challenge. Bring it on! Maybe the Generalist isn’t dead after all.