Full Integration: Slade Architecture's James Slade on Design Lessons, Peer-to-Peer Mentoring, and Hiring Women
By Julia Gamolina
James Slade, FAIA LEED-AP is a registered architect and co-founder of Slade Architecture. His award winning work has been widely published and exhibited. In addition to his practice, James teaches graduate level design studio, most recently at Pratt Institute and Parsons. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University and a MArch degree from Columbia University. In his interview with Julia Gamolina, James talks about the fruitful community of architecture peers in New York City, as well as the integration of family life with running a practice, advising those just starting their careers to take the plunge towards whatever it is they are dreaming of doing.
JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
I was interested in design from an early age — drawing cars and boats and things like that. I decided pretty early on that I wanted to do automobile design. I was pretty focused on it, and found out that the best automotive design school in the country was Pasadena Art Center School of Design, California. I asked my mom to take me there to visit the school when I was thirteen years old because I wanted to do a tour…which is kind of a really weird, geeky thing for a thirteen-year-old to want to do.
We went to the admissions office and the woman was so surprised that I was there, as a thirteen-year-old, that she asked the Dean to come down. So, the Dean showed me around the school, saying, “We’ve never had a thirteen-year-old come and inquire about a design career!” It was definitely a very positive thing to have happen. As I got a little bit older, I realized that there’s a lot of bureaucracy in automotive design and I was also very interested in architecture – my grandfather had built a house in Mexico and I “helped him” build it when I was seven. That’s what led me to architecture.
James and Hayes Slade with their Slade Architecture colleagues.
James and Hayes Slade with their Slade Architecture colleagues.
Tell me how Slade Architecture came about, and how you got to where you are today.
I did my undergraduate degree at Cornell, and then I went to graduate school at Columbia. My wife Hayes was, at the time, working as a structural engineer at ARUP in New York and then we went and lived in London for a little bit. I worked for Rick Mather in London, during school – I took a year and half off from graduate school. When I came back, I finished my degree and went to work for an architectural firm; I worked for what was, at the time, Polshek, and then Richard Gluckman Architects, but soon decided that I wanted to start a firm with a colleague of mine from graduate school, Minsuk Cho.
We started a firm, Cho Slade Architecture, in 1998. I was working all the time on that, eighteen or nineteen-hour days. Hayes was working very hard as a strategy consultant for BCG. During the day, we would spend a lot of hours apart from each other and we had two kids at that time already. Then 9/11 happened. I remember us talking about how we spend all this time apart, and we actually really like each other, and we had married so we could spend time together [laughs], so we should just work together.
I started talking to my partner at the time, Min, about bringing Hayes in. Most of our work was in Korea at the time, and I was flying back and forth a lot. So, Min and I decided to just split up and Hayes and I started our firm in 2002 – basically, a little bit over a year after 9/11 and we’ve been growing ever since. It is fun working together, and now we spend a lot of time together [laughs].
“...mentorship is traditionally seen as advice from somebody with a lot more experience helping you, but I think, as a community, there’s a lot of same-level mentoring that goes on in the city.”
[Laughs] That’s awesome. Throughout all this, who mentored you?
A few people, mostly people I worked for. Rick Mather in London was a very good mentor and I continued to reach out to him after moving back to New York. Then I worked for Richard Gluckman.He’s very sensitive in regard to space and how things are configured, so I learned a lot from him as well.
The other thing is, I’ve also learned a lot from my peers. I had great teachers in graduate school, but I think I learned as much from my schoolmates as I did from the professors. I know mentorship is traditionally seen as somebody with a lot more experience helping you, but I think, as a community, there’s a lot of same-level mentoring that goes on in the city, and that continues to be the case. We’re friends with a lot of architects and we help each other out, usually in an informal way. It’s a pretty broad network of mentorship.
That’s wonderful to hear – the architectural community really is pretty small, we’re all in this together, and having that peer-to-peer support network is vital. Paying it forward, who do you mentor and how do you mentor?
Obviously, the people in our firm are the people whom Hayes and I, together, feel like we are consciously mentoring. So, that’s really the most formal mentoring that we do. We also try to participate in other programs that are more structured mentorships – the AIA has the TORCH Mentorship Program that mixes young architects with FAIA people and I’ve done that as well. Those programs are super valuable because mentorship is hard to codify and keep up if you don’t have structure like that.
You’ve mentioned this already but, in addition to being an architect and a partner, you’re a father of four! Talk to me about fatherhood and all of the integration that needs to happen.
Yeah, in our case, it really is integration [laughs]. We’ve had peaks and valleys, I would say, in the way that we manage our kids and our personal life. We’ve had some periods where we really didn’t have enough separation; our kids would be at the office and fall asleep on the couch, and we would pick them up and carry them home, asleep, and then wake up and redo it again the next week. That was probably a little rough on the kids, but I think kids are very resilient and I think also seeing both of us working and being productive was also really good. We have three girls and one boy. I think Hayes has been a really great model for them because she has always been working – when we had Margot , we literally would bring her into the office in a little bassinet and she would just sit by the desk while we worked. Hayes came to work probably about five days after giving birth to her.
That just shows you the crazy tough realities of being a new working mom in an insanely fast-paced market like New York. I mean, talk about needing to change what our clients expect from us. Carla Swickerath did the same thing, she talked about it in her interview.
I don’t know that we’re models of balance [laughs]
Sure you are – you made it all work in the way that you needed to, and look at you guys now! With this in mind, what are some other challenges that you have encountered in your career so far?
I feel like, personally, I’ve been very lucky in getting breaks and getting recognition. I think any challenges I’ve faced are typical architect challenges of designing projects, getting good people to build them, and getting good partners to work with. I don’t feel that I’ve had anything that stands out, that’s atypical. I do think that integrating family with architecture is a challenge. I think that’s true for any architect who has a family.
I think it’s particularly difficult for women, who are often assumed to take a leading role in the childcare.
“You have to start by hiring women…it’s pretty basic stuff.”
I’m so glad you said “assumed.” The leading role shouldn’t be automatically expected - either parent can take that on.
Definitely. As such, we’ve made a conscious effort to have a much more flexible environment in our office, where people could do both things and it wasn’t like you had to choose one or the other, even if we haven’t necessarily done that for ourselves.
What do you think needs to happen for more equity in the field and what do you try to do in your daily practice to move that forward?
You have to start by hiring women…it’s pretty basic stuff. We do have more women in our office than men – we try to be conscious about hiring women, but we also feel like we just hire really good people [laughs].
Right, you hired the best people for the job, plain and simple, and it just so happens that they were women
Yes.
Who do you admire in the industry?
I was thinking of Zaha …she was my teacher at Columbia. She had a lot of flaws but you have to admire what she did.
Flaws?
She could be very harsh on her team, her staff, and even her students, but she also persevered in a very male-dominated profession as a Middle-Eastern woman with everything stacked against her. It was really evident when I went to her funeral. The family had a traditional funeral in a mosque and all the men were downstairs and the women were in the back, behind the screens. It was this sea of men in black suits and then you had Zaha’s white coffin sitting there in front of all of them.
Wow. That image.
I thought it was a really potent symbol of her whole career, you know, a woman in a field dominated by men, from a Muslim culture. Another architect, who I think is very interesting is Sejima. Again, I feel like she has done a tremendous job and done it her own way. She has a unique point of view and her own sensibility.
The other thing that I like is that there’s a real mix of work in architecture. The industry is a very heterogeneous environment. When I went to school, we had the New York Five – you know, Richard Meier and those guys, with very strong styles that were dominant. That has more or less disappeared – there’s a variety of different things going on. People are much freer to pursue their own interests and get recognition for it. I think people were always doing that, but they weren’t always recognized.
“...if you want to start your own firm, you have to just start it.”
That’s exactly why Madame Architect exists. There are so many women in the field, doing very different and very interesting things, and the spotlight wasn’t being put on them. My last question for you is a two-part question: what is the best advice you have gotten along the way and what advice do you have for those just starting in the industry?
Some advice that I got early on – and I don’t remember who it was from, maybe it was from Steven Holl – was that if you want to start your own firm, you have to just start it. You just have to take the plunge because very few people have some big, juicy commission that they’ve gotten. And that’s obviously easier if you’re a super wealthy person, which I was not…still am not [laughs]. It’s very simple advice, but I think that sometimes you don’t realize that people do just do it and kind of put it all on the line. In terms of giving advice, I think not being afraid to do things is super basic advice. The other thing about advice is that people are very different and so different people could benefit from different advice. I think you have to tailor it to the person. That’s the other difficult thing about that question.
Right, the advice anyone gives is all relatively autobiographical, so just because you have a certain take on something, it’s based on the way that your life has unfolded. Is there anything this sparked that you wanted to say before we stop recording, any parting thoughts?
I think it’s great what you’re doing. I think it’s so important, like you said, to be part of this broader, more inclusive conversation that’s happening, which is facilitated by technology and you also need an active agent, like you are, to do it. I’m so stoked to be able to participate, I feel very lucky.
We also have a very nice community of architects in New York. All of the firms that we consider our peers are very helpful and very collaborative – it’s not like we’re necessarily doing projects together, but we’ll often call each other up for advice or for consultants or other questions, and for that I feel very fortunate. I know that that was not always the case in New York. When I was in school, there was infamous backstabbing and infighting between all the better-known design firms and I just don’t think that’s the case anymore.
I totally know what you mean, I feel like the community here in New York is a real community, and a lot of people that I’ve spoken to all know each other and work together and help each other, like Hayes and Elaine — Elaine Molinar — they’re some of my favorite people in the industry, and they’re friends, and that’s really nice to know. I’m so happy to be based and working here.
It’s a great time to be in New York.