All the Possibilities: Parsons' Mark Gardner on Cumulative Experience, Broadening Your Network, and Opening Your Mind
By Julia Gamolina
Mark L. Gardner, AIA, NOMA is a principal at Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects (J/GA). J/GA is an award-winning design practice and studio that works across scales from product design to interiors to buildings. Mark is the Assistant Professor of Architectural Practice and Society at the School of the Constructed Environments, Parsons the New School. Mark serves on the Boards of the UPenn Weitzman School of Design, Van Alen Institute and the Youth Design Center. In his conversation with Julia Gamolina, Mark talks about building a wide range of experiences, as well as a wide and diverse network, advising those just starting their careers to have an open mind about all the available possibilities.
JG: Let’s start at the very beginning Mark – how did you become interested in all of this?
MG: [Laughs] Where do I start? I think I was always interested in art, science, and math. Growing up, I sketched a lot; I loved drawing buildings, loved drawing landscapes. People were like, “You should be an architect.” Being a Black male, as a minority, you are always pushed to careers in engineering and STEM – it’s a thing. I found out later, there aren’t that many Black architects.
I didn’t really meet my first Black architect until I was halfway through college. I was introduced to the small number of Black architects, and learned about NOMA (The National Organization of Minority Architects), and found out that there were a little less than two percent of architects who are Black. In fact, decades later, that number hasn’t changed. After college, at the office where I was working with two of my mentors, they had this poster and it was the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of NOMA and all of these architects were listed. I remember seeing it and saying, “Oh, look at this poster, this is amazing, are all these the founding members or the group of architects?” because it fit on a poster. And they said, “No, that’s all the Black architects in the country right now.”
“My NOMA Sisters and Brothers. Jack Travis’ book African-American Architects was a big influence on me. The counsel of my friends Tonja Adair and Kelly Powell have helped me grow as a designer. I have mentored emerging Architects like Pascale Sablan, who has gone on to mentor, support and help others entering the field.”
“My wife, Margit Detweiler and I have so many books that we have built a wall of books in our apt. We love books. Margit is a writer/editor/content strategist with a storytelling site for GenX women- TueNight.com”
Wow. Having realized this, walk me through how you got to where you are today just in terms of both your practice and your teaching, and any significant steps along the way that kind of progressed your career.
When I got out of college, it was the early 90s, there was a recession. I was at a low point but luckily, I was living in Atlanta, which wasn’t as affected by the recession. Businesses were hiring, but I still had a hard time finding a job, so I ended up working in construction. My dad was like, “What are you doing? You went to college just to do a job that you didn’t have to go to college for,” but I remember my grandmother telling me that they had to survive during the Depression and she was just like, “You just do whatever you need to do.”
It was amazing because what ended up happening was the fortunate moment where the contractor needed shop drawings done and their guy who did the shop drawings had retired. I said I could do the shop drawings and some of the other guys who were there were like, “Yeah, let college boy do the shop drawings, he has some architecture or engineering degree or something.” So, I ended up learning to do the shop drawings and then by the time I got to graduate school, I was doing part-time work for an ironworker, doing his shop drawings while I was studying.
That’s fantastic experience, so early on. And you really see the immediate effect of these drawings!
In the moment I felt so far behind, especially as my friends had gotten jobs in architectural offices, but they were like, “But you’re working on construction stuff.” I didn’t really appreciate it until much later when I realized that the experience was really good. Later, I was working with a project manager and they were wondering how they were going to do [this detail] about welding and I said, “Oh, you’re going to do a plug weld and it’s going to do this and that and then you won’t even see it and then we’ll weld on this side and then we’ll just put an angle there.” [Laughs] They were like, “How do you know all of that, didn’t you just get out of graduate school?!”
“Sometimes, the best you can do is to be prepared and go with the direction the market takes you, until you can cut your own path.”
Yes, Kai-Uwe and I talked about this – all experience really is cumulative! And all of it adds up and just makes you a more and more experienced professional. What did you do next?
My first big break was with Stanley Love-Stanley – Bill Stanley and Ivenue Love-Stanley who both won the AIA Whitney Young Award for their work. They were amazing mentors for me and gave me many opportunities. There was a point, though, when our business development person took me to lunch one day and said, “I think you have outgrown this moment and you could really stand to get more experience that graduate school could provide you.” So, I went back to graduate school. I went to Penn and then worked in Philadelphia for a time and then moved to New York. I’ve been in New York now about, oh gosh, twenty-two years or so.
And you have your own practice now, and you’re teaching?
Yes, I joined Stephan Jaklitsch’s office when Stephan was doing a lot of retail work. I soon became an associate and then senior associate and then, at some point about 10 years ago, he took me out to dinner and said, “Hey, we work really well together, I think a partnership would be good, I’m willing to change the name of the practice.”
So I was doing the professional practice course and teaching part-time at UPenn – and then at some point I had stopped teaching to focus on practice. I never quite saw myself as an academic — and then, it didn’t seem practical to split my time between the two worlds [of practice and academia.] But some years later, Andy Bernheimer, then the director of the graduate program at Parsons, asked me to come to Parsons to fill in. I once again realized how much I enjoyed being in the classroom, working with students, teaching them and learning from them. Eventually I became an assistant professor and director of the MArch program for three years. I realized how practice can impact and influence the classroom, and vice versa — and how important that is. There’s a constant, open dialogue, back and forth, and each elevates the other.
Talk to me about where you are in your career today. This is a moment like no other for so many reasons.
We’re living history right now. In 2008, after the financial crash, we lost all our residential work. We had retail, high-end retail, that actually kept us busy globally, but that was all that we really had, and a lot of other things just disappeared. We really needed to diversify our work.
We hit this moment with COVID, and all of a sudden, we get all these calls about residential work. A lot of other work went on hold because of COVID, and we’re depending on the residential work, which is strange. Sometimes, the best you can do is to be prepared and go with the direction the market takes you, until you can cut your own path.
The Pagganuck Pavillion by 2019 Design Workshop on Governors Island.
“Bees – I love pollinators and they have helped me learn more about Land Conservation and Urban Agriculture.”
Right, everyone has been nesting for the past fifteen months. What have been other challenges for you in your career?
I’ve tried to [believe] that you just work hard, and race has nothing to do with anything, but I find that one of the biggest battles, especially as I’ve thought about it within the last year, has been issues of race.
The question that still opens up to me is why there isn’t a more diverse group of people in architecture. Why am I looking at a panel and it’s all white males speaking? And, oh wait, they just referenced a book by a woman who’s sitting here in the audience, who should probably be on the panel. It’s a systemic problem and a much deeper problem because it all starts with, “What’s my circle of friends or people that I know?” People don’t realize that they turn to their circle of friends, and I have to say a lot of us are lying to ourselves about who we know. It’s like, “Oh, we need someone who’s African-American to be on the panel? Oh, I know Mark, I’ll ask Mark.”
The long-term problem is that there just aren’t enough BIPOC architects. NOMA has initiatives like Project Pipeline which are critically important, but we’re still not there. Like I said before, Black architects make up around two percent of all registered architects. We haven’t been successful at building the numbers, which begins to tell you something. Is this issue important enough for the profession, for our allies, to stand up and say, “We have to make a lot of changes”? Derrick Bell, the Harvard Law Professor would call this ”Interest Convergence.”
We certainly need to make a lot of changes. Tell me about who your mentors were throughout it all.
I come from a family of teachers — my sister, my grandmother, aunts and uncles. It was funny because when I was first going to take the teaching job, my sister called me and said, “Look, this isn’t about you or your ego. This is about the students and what they need. Are you ready for that?”
Annette Fierro, who now teaches at Penn Design, has been another mentor. She was just starting teaching when I was undergrad at Georgia Tech and supported my admission to Penn for graduate school. I understand now it was for diversity, the importance of having different voices, different people, different experiences in the room. She’s a Hispanic woman who would push for me in the same way I now work for issues around diversity and belonging. So, she was a big mentor. Bill Stanley and Ivenue Love-Stanley, whom I mentioned earlier, were also very instrumental.
“A colleague of mine was once approached with a question like, “Wow, you have all these diverse students and panels, how do you do it?” and I thought, what kind of question is that? How do you do it? You have to want to do it. That’s the bottom line.”
Who do you mentor and how do you mentor?
I’ve had students over the years who have come back to me for advice, especially my African American students. I’m always happy to share my experiences because to be a minority is to know that you’ve been mentored in some way, that people had faith in you and helped you in your journey. So, you try to give back.
I’m involved with a lot of things too – I’m on the board of the Youth Design Center, which is a STEM group that gives creative practice training to young people. I always say that in any of these organizations where I serve on the board, such as the Weitzman School of Design at UPenn, usually I’m working for diversity issues, either by advocating for students or advocating for programs where we can actually impact communities. Operating at a high level, when you have a larger vision and a bigger view, is a way of being inclusive as well.
Talk to me about the integration of all that you do into your life. You do a lot. You’re a professor, you’re a practicing architect, you’re a husband. How do you integrate everything?
To be honest, I am fifty-two years old, and I feel like I’m still learning how to do that (laughs). My wife will sometimes remind me, “Hey, remember, you promised that this was going to happen today?” And not in a way that’s bugging me, but more reminding me to keep me to my word, keep me honest. Sometimes it’s easy to get myopic, sucked into the work where one thing leads to the next, and when you have a passion for it, you can just keep going and going but it’s not the only thing.
“A trip to Maasi country in Tanzania to see local bees. It was a trip with my clients Mary & Caneen Canning. Travel, seeing, hearing, and tasting other places is important to learning.”
“I love teaching and I have led the Urban Design-Build program- Design Workshop with Dr. Sharon Sutton for the last 5 years at Parsons.”
What would you advise your male peers to do in terms of gender equity? What would you advise your peers to be doing now in terms of racial equity?
Oh, wow. I think in terms of being an ally, a lot of it is recognizing your own privilege, recognizing that, even as a Black male, I’m given space that others may not have. So, I always try to be inclusive. If somebody is trying to put together a panel, I make an effort to help them. A colleague of mine was once approached with a question like, “Wow, you have all these diverse students and panels, how do you do it?” and I thought, what kind of question is that? How do you do it? You have to want to do it. That’s the bottom line.
I think some people think that somehow it just happens. If you look at the invite list and look at the room, you’ve made choices. You also choose whom you exclude. As director, I was in charge of hiring or dealing with issues of recruitment for the school. Not to pat myself on the back, but I think we have done a great job at the Parsons M.Arch program in terms of improving minority recruitment. Part of it is knowing where to look, reaching out to HBCUs (Historically Black colleges and universities) and Latinx initiatives.
I’ll tell you, the biggest pushback in terms of diversity is that you hear the criticism, “Well, we don’t want to lower the quality.” You will have to make changes in order to accommodate people who are different. You can’t be inclusive without change. I think people who push back against it just don’t want the difficulty and want to stick to the status quo.
Right, your point earlier about how you just have to want it enough to make it happen – that’s really what it comes down to.
Check your bias. It’s like, who do I know? Oh, I know a bunch of guys. But then maybe you really like a book, so then reach out to the author and see if she can come be on the panel. And if not, can she recommend someone, who she would put on the panel? You have to widen your network. So, to counter that argument about lowering the quality or the qualifications of folks, your pool has five people and mine has thirty, who has a better chance of finding the more qualified people? I do, because I have the numbers.
“The profession needs to widen its view of things we are capable of doing — whether we get into material supply chain or circular economy or finance and alternative financing models.”
For anyone interested in architecture or joining the field, what advice do you have for them?
[Laughs] Sometimes, I tell the joke that if I had a kid, I would not want them to go into architecture. So many architects feel this way about their kids.
How do we change this, though, because architecture is so wonderful!
I think it is wonderful too, and it needs to change. The profession needs to widen its view of things we are capable of doing — whether we get into material supply chain or circular economy or finance and alternative financing models. I was drawn to architecture because I felt like you had to have this sort of jack-of-all-trades, which means actually master of none, but you have to actually try to master a lot of these, you have to become an expert at so many different things.
So that’s what I tell people. If you’re entering the field, try to have an open mind about the possibilities it holds for you. Don’t listen to anyone’s definition of what it is or how other people identify it.. It’s like, what do you mean you’re working on a food justice project? What is that? What is an urban farm? Well, let me tell you about that, because architects do that.
That’s good advice, it’s like yes, you want to gather information from what’s come before you, but you’re not bound to that by any means and, if anything, you’re just trying to add on to everything that’s come before.
Right, and I think the problems we face globally mean we have to change our focus. I could go on and on, but I also want to say that I love what you do and the voices you’re amplifying and that you’re putting out there. Andrea Steele, who I’m good friends with, and people like Pascale Sablan, I’ve known them for so long and then I see your interviews and I’m like, “Wait, why didn’t I know that?” and that just really broadens your world. Thank you for what you do.
Thank YOU Mark!