Opening Credits: Carrie Norman on Getting Her Start and Topics That Need to be Foregrounded
By Julia Gamolina
Carrie is a co-founder of the New Orleans and Chicago-based Norman Kelley, a design collaborative that was a recipient of the Architecture League of New York Young Architect’s Prize in 2014, and the United States Artists Fellowship in 2018. In addition, Carrie is an Assistant Professor in architecture at Tulane University. She received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia and a Masters in Architecture from Princeton University. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Carrie talks about her experiences leading up to and with her young firm, advising those just starting their careers to value their mentors and venture out of their architecture studios.
JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
CN: Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, I remember the dinner table was constantly over-crowded with floor plans, material swatches, and architects’ scales. My mom was and still is an amazing interior designer, and as a single mom supporting three kids, her work would often come home with her and she loved walking me through the projects she was working on. These were my bedtime stories. On occasions I could pick up a slight antagonism towards the architect. “They create problems I have to fix,” she’d say, and then we’d go on a sort of Where’s Waldo tour through the drawings and she’d point them all out. For a long time I thought architects only made problems that other people had to fix [laughs].
I would also frequently join her on work sites. I’d study the floor plan and try to memorize a route through all of the rooms of the project. Then I’d try to reenact the route in the real building. To be honest, I still kind of do this, and it still amazes me that buildings start out as mini versions on paper. Throughout my youth, architecture was both a comforting bedtime subject and a wild adventure.
Exhibition photo of Fixed Tilt-Top Mirror Table (far right), for No Thing exhibition, Friedman Benda Gallery, 2018. Photo by Daniel Kukla, courtesy of Friedman Benda and the artists.
Arakawa and Madeline Gins: Eternal Gradient, exhibition design, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Columbia University, 2018. Photo by James Ewing, courtesy of Columbia GSAPP.
What did you learn about yourself in studying architecture?
During the fall of my first year at the University of Virginia, I took an introductory architecture course open to all students. I was immediately hooked and applied to transfer into the architecture school that winter. The application needed to be dropped off about a mile or two from my dorm and the deadline coincided with a major blizzard. I remember this day, vividly. Classes were cancelled, roads were in rough shape, and all my friends were either out enjoying the snow or holed up indoors. Meanwhile, I was cursing my way through two feet of snow, squinting through a narrow slit between my scarf and hat.
Altogether, the trek ended up taking over two hours. But, around forty-five minutes into it, my cursing began to give way to a sense of pride. I realized that I really wanted this, and that I was putting myself through hell because this really mattered to me. Realizing this, that architecture wasn’t just a passing fling, changed me and how I would conduct myself as a student. Foremost, I learned that the joy and the rewards of architecture aren’t readily given. They are earned and borne out of commitment.
How did you get your start in the field?
After graduating from UVA, I accepted a position at SHoP Architects and moved to New York. SHoP was only around thirty-five people back then! They weren’t building much but had two partners that were women, and that attracted me to the office. Everyone there was incredibly talented - I quickly learned how much I didn’t know. Their knowledge of architectural precedent and their ability to describe projects impressed me. I always felt a little bit like the kid from the country. After two years, I applied to graduate schools, to fill in the gaps of my architectural knowledge. Princeton was the ideal place for this; placing emphasis on history and theory, it was the perfect complement to my undergraduate education. It was also outside of the city and a great place to focus.
“...the joy and the rewards of architecture aren’t readily given. They are earned and borne out of commitment.”
How did Norman Kelley get started?
My design partner, Thomas Kelley, and I met when we were eighteen, in architecture school at UVA. During summers, the two of us collaborated with our professors, Jason Johnson and Nataly Gattegno, of Future Forms, on a number of competitions. A few years later, Thomas and I would reunite at Princeton. We would also reunite with Jason and Nataly, during their Van Alen fellowship in the summer of 2009. They hired us to assist them with two major installations they’d planned in New York that summer.
At this point, Thomas and I had worked together on multiple occasions, but always for other people. At the end of the summer we vowed the next time we worked together would be for ourselves. I still had another year of grad school, and Thomas was bound for Chicago, so it took us a few years. It wasn’t until 2012 that we settled on a competition, hosted by the Architectural League of New York, to design a folly for Socrates Sculpture Park. At the time, Thomas had started teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and I had returned to SHoP. We were both moonlighting, working on the competition on nights and weekends. We didn’t win, but I think we got an Honorable Mention. It was enough to give us the confidence that we should keep working together.
What have been some of the milestones that led you to focus on your practice full-time?
In 2013, we completed the Wrong Chairs project, a collection of seven American Windsor chairs, each strategically defective. The project offered us our first exhibition opportunity, at Volume Gallery. Then in 2014, we were awarded the Architectural League Prize and the opportunity to exhibit some of our work alongside colleagues we admire. In 2015, we completed our largest drawing to date, on the façade of the Chicago Cultural Center during the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. This is also the year we would get hired by the Australian skin care company, Aesop, to design the interior of their first flagship store in Chicago. It felt like Norman Kelley finally had the momentum for me to leave my job at SHoP, and this is also when I got into teaching. In New York, having a young practice and teaching is very common, often times even necessary for survival.
Chicago, how do you see? is a collection of 65 window drawings on the 65 windows of the Chicago Cultural Center’s Michigan Avenue Façade, for the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. Photo by Spencer McNeil.
Photo of Aesop Bucktown. Photo courtesy of Aesop USA Inc.
Where are you in your career today?
In the opening credits [laughs]. Professionally, Norman Kelley is a young architecture practice, and we’re scaling up, patiently. Academically, I am a junior faculty at the beginning of my career as an educator.
Up until recently, my career and teaching was based in New York, where I’d been living and practicing for over a decade. The past ten years has included a number of important milestones for me, professionally, including getting licensed, co-founding my own practice, and beginning a career in teaching. Now, in New Orleans, I hope the next decade is filled with as much personal and professional growth. In particular, I hope to develop as a teacher, and simultaneously expand our office into new contexts.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?
Scaling up is a challenge. Right now the range of our work spans XXS to S. Without experience with larger scale projects, it’s difficult for a client to stomach the risk of hiring us. It’s funny, at SHoP, I never worked on a project less than a million square feet. Now, our largest completed project is 5,000 square feet. We’ve come close to receiving work for larger projects on a few occasions, but each time we’ve come up short.
We’re not in a rush for the big projects but we also don’t want to get pigeon-holed into doing the same kind of work over and over again. To grow as architects, we need that diversity of project types. For now we try to do our very best to translate big ideas into small projects, be it furniture-scaled objects, or rehabilitated interiors.
“Scaling up is a challenge...To grow as architects, we need that diversity of project types. For now we try to do our very best to translate big ideas into small projects, be it furniture-scaled objects, or rehabilitated interiors.”
What have been the highlights?
It’s been a privilege to participate in exhibitions among architects we admire and to collaborate with artists outside of our field. Recently we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with the performance artist, Brendan Fernandes. It has exposed us to new disciplines like ballet and sculpture, new audiences, and the opportunity to display work in one of the coolest galleries in the Whitney Museum, during this past summer’s biennial.
Really, any project that brings Thomas and I together in the same city is a highlight. This spring we are co-teaching upper-level options studio at the Harvard GSD that centers on optics and architectural reuse. The GSD has been very supportive, and we’re very honored by the opportunity.
Who are you admiring right now and why?
Some European offices like Architecten de Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Lacaton & Vassal, and the Rotor Collective are advancing approaches to architectural reuse. This is a subject that interests me, greatly. I think American architecture can learn a lot from our European counterparts when it comes to working with existing buildings. There’s of course the sustainability argument for adaptive reuse, but my interest in the topic also stems from a fascination with hand-me-down culture. When you’re working with something that already exists, you’re never working from a clean slate. It’s also rarer for a young architect to get a ground-up commission. Alterations to existing buildings are more common, but there’s still a sort of stigma that this kind of work is somehow less worthy than ground-up work. I don’t think this is the case in Europe, where the building stock is older and a lot of architectural work centers on extending the useful life of older buildings.
Composite elevation of Wrong Chairs. Photo courtesy of Volume Gallery.
Carrie and Thomas drawing on the wall of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, for the wall drawing installation, Whitney’s View, as part of the 2014 Architectural League Prize exhibition.
I’m also admiring architect moms. My partner and I recently welcomed our daughter into the world. I was really impressed with the interview you conducted with Kimberly Holden, my former boss, and with Brandt Knapp, a good friend. Babies and architecture rarely find themselves in the same sentence and it was refreshing to see the subject foregrounded. For inspiration, I look to some of my contemporaries like Vivian Lee, Tei Carpenter, Meredith Miller, Ellie Abrons, Ania Jaworska, Kelly Bair, Jennifer Bonner, and Megan Panzano who are able to perform at the top of the field, who are traveling, lecturing, teaching, and practicing all while juggling young ones at home. They have my deepest respect.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission?
Throughout my six years of architectural training, I met and worked with a range of incredible teachers and classmates. Their influence and wisdom still impact me. Now as a licensed architect, partner of an architecture office, and an educator, I aspire to have a similar impact on a new generation of architects. In and out of the classroom, I hope to be a role model for students and affect a culture of empowerment for all aspiring architects.
“I’m also admiring architect moms...Babies and architecture rarely find themselves in the same sentence and it was refreshing to see the subject foregrounded.”
Finally, what do you wish you knew when starting out that you know now? What advice do you have for those starting their career?
When just starting out, it’s difficult to appreciate just how much professors and mentors have to offer. What they have to offer isn’t always obvious. There was so much I wish I could have learned, but didn’t know its value or how to pursue it. The gravity of the studio or project deadline can be all consuming, and I wish I’d allowed myself a little more bandwidth to see other perspectives or venture outside of the architecture building and take advantage of the wider resources and opportunities available at the schools I attended.
As someone who is self-admittedly very shy, I’d also encourage students who might find themselves in similar shoes to not let their intimidation get in the way of reaching out to their faculty, potential mentors or employers. These relationships are so valuable, and I’d say, in general, architects who are in positions of leadership tend to genuinely want to help. Lastly, I’d tell architecture students to attend all the lectures [laughs].