Impact and Optimism: Julie Kim on Academia and Practice, Sharing her Work, and Issues Bigger than Buildings
By Amy Stone
Julie Ju-Youn Kim RA AIA is founder and principal of c2architecturestudio, an award-winning architectural practice. Currently, Associate Chair, Director of the Undergraduate Program, and Associate Professor with tenure in the School of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, Ms. Kim’s research interest includes cities and sites in transition, revealing their potential through the inherently optimistic acts of making and building. She was invited to author a chapter and co-authored the conclusion in Teaching and Designing in Detroit: Ten Women on Pedagogy and Practice (Vogel, S., Blume, L. eds. Routledge, 2019). She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College and her Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Julie talks to Amy Stone about her path in both academia and practice, being on the fringe, and mentorship, advising those just starting their careers not to undersell themselves.
AS: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
JK: I came into architecture late. Ever since I was five, I was told I would become a doctor. Pretty much everyone in my family is a physician, except for me. I took all the science, math, and AP classes in high school, but I also really loved taking art classes. When I started at Wellesley College, I was taking biology classes but realized I wasn’t enjoying them. I tested out different classes to decide on a major. I kept coming back to the art classes. I still remember the day I called and told my parents that I had decided to switch my major from biology to studio art. My announcement was met with dead silence. [laughs]
Later, I talked to my advisor who was the chair of the art history department at Wellesley. She asked, “Julie, what are you interested in? What fascinates you?” We had this freeform discussion and she said, “You may want to look into architecture.” As a junior, I cross-registered at MIT for my first introduction to architecture class. I absolutely loved it. That is really what started setting me on that path in architecture. And, when I told my parents I was going to major in architecture, that definitely sat with them a lot better.
Building a Practice: Threads describing conceptual framework for projects
Technology Renders the City Transparent, seedlingmotors
What did you learn about yourself while you studied architecture?
I learned that I have a willingness to make mistakes. I didn’t expect that! I was always that kid that studied really hard. It was important that I get everything just perfect. In architecture - and I think this came from the art classes that I took - it was all about iteration, trying something, starting a drawing, starting a painting, starting a sculpture, and knowing that the first attempt isn’t going to be the last attempt. It wasn’t until I started studying architecture that I realized that was part of my DNA - a willingness to experiment, take risks, and make mistakes.
You attended MIT for graduate school. How did you get your start in the field after that?
At MIT, I met Paul, who is now my husband. After we graduated, we were both hungry to start our own practice. We moved to Detroit, Michigan, where Paul had grown up and had some professional contacts, and we started building a practice. I look back on it now and think I must have been crazy to do that - move to a city where I knew almost no one, had no money, no job prospects - but that’s what we did. We invited a third partner to join us and the three of us started building this firm. It was challenging but it was also really terrific.
We were new practitioners in the city and interested in new and fresh ideas. We were the ones who asked the question, “If you say that’s how it’s always been done here, why? Why not do this?” We came in with an optimistic lens and really thought about ways of building the city and asking questions, “How do you practice in a city that is so much about diminishment? How do we contribute?” My unfamiliarity with Detroit’s history sparked my desire to speculate on a different condition of the city. I wanted to build on the histories, but I was motivated to start a new story, rather than dwell on the past. We were only going to be there for a year but we stayed there for twelve years. That is also where I started teaching.
“Acts of making and building are inherently optimistic acts.”
Now you are in Atlanta! What were the significant milestones in your career that led you here?
When we first started our practice in Detroit, we were invited to be part of an exhibition about empowering the city with new directions in urban architecture. Our project, seedlingmotors, asked about the power of technology and its ability to connect both local and global communities, which now sounds so obvious, but in the context of 1996, it was a new idea. During the opening reception for the exhibition, I introduced myself to Steve Vogel, who was the dean of the School of Architecture at University of Detroit Mercy. That ended up being a really significant moment because within a couple of months, I was invited to sit on a design review at Detroit Mercy. A month later, I was invited to teach a design studio as a part-time faculty member, which turned into a visiting professor position, and then I was invited to compete for a tenure track appointment. That experience started my career in the place where it is now, where I’m working to straddle both academia and practice.
The next milestone for me was when Max was born. That was a significant moment in my life. Up until that point, I had been so singularly focused on building my portfolio, wanting to achieve tenure, getting licensed, and trying to focus everything on either my teaching or my practice - 100%. Then Max was born. It’s very clear in my life that there is before Max and after Max. Everything kind of shifted. I remember Dean Vogel said to me “Julie, you know at some point you are going to have to choose. You are going back to make a choice between whether you want to teach or practice, especially now that you’ve started a family.” Looking back at that, I haven’t had to choose. Things have been adjusted in terms of proportion of my energy and my focus, but, happily, I still haven’t had to do either or.
Where do you see yourself in your career today?
I feel like I haven’t accomplished everything I want to accomplish yet. There are two paths that I can see. One is that I see myself wanting to continue to build my capacity as a practitioner because it’s an important part of what shaped me into who I am today and I don’t want to let that go. The other path is that I really enjoy being in administrative leadership and serving as a mentor to faculty and students.
It’s meaningful to be a part of the conversations of shaping a vision for the school and talking about curriculum with my colleagues. And, I really love to teach, too! So, in all, I feel like I’m right in the middle of my career. I want to leverage my past experiences to help me get to the next place. I just don’t know what that is exactly. I do know that we just renovated our house, so I’m not looking to move any time soon. [laughs]
Julie with her colleagues and students at the final presentation of a Flourishing Communities workshop
Looking back, what have been your biggest challenges?
One ongoing issue is the challenge of always needing a qualifier associated with who I am. I am not just an architect, I am a woman architect, or I am a Korean architect. It’s like I’m always on the fringe, but this has really been around my whole life. Being born in Kansas and then moving to Tennessee when I was eleven, there were not very many other people who looked like me. And, now as an architect, where the balance is more men than women, the challenges play out in different ways. It has happened way too many times where I will be in a meeting with male colleagues and, even though I was more equipped to answer a certain question, the client would defer to one of the men in the room.
There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of equity between men and women in our profession and in the academy. For me, one important part of my job that I take very seriously is mentoring not only our female students but our male students also, by modeling behavior to help them understand what it means to be inclusive and to understand that is not just a thing you check off. I am still learning myself how to do this, too! That is one of the biggest challenges I still think about.
Absolutely. I love to hear about your aspiration to mentor and set a model for others.
Conversely, what have been the biggest highlights?
The biggest highlights have been when I have had opportunities to share my work with a broader audience. So, two come to mind right away. In 2014, I was invited to participate in the Spring lecture series at the University of Maryland. I presented my work on something I’ve always been interested in - the relationship between clothing, the female body, and architecture. The exhibition was both a theoretical architectural study and an installation that invited you to consider that we wear our homes, kind of like a house-coat. Being able to share that work was a highlight.
Another highlight was when I was invited to author a chapter and co-author the conclusion in a book which was a collection of essays from ten women who wrote on design, pedagogy, and practice in Detroit. My essay focused on how we wanted to reclaim and reveal Detroit’s history and culture through our projects. I felt like we were always on the edge of the next idea. Sharing my work was a chance to look back at everything I had been involved with in practice and how it aligns with my own interests in thinking about architecture as being optimistic. Acts of making and building are inherently optimistic acts. The day that book arrived, seeing it in print, was pretty phenomenal.
“One important part of my job that I take very seriously is mentoring not only our female students but our male students also, by modeling behavior to help them understand what it means to be inclusive and to understand that is not just a thing you check off.”
Who are you admiring right now?
Today I am admiring the swell of all the voices who are taking a stance on inclusive design practices and owning questions of equity. These are not necessarily new questions, but they are in the foreground now. What does equity mean? What does social justice look like in our discipline? In a way, it connects to my current effort, the Flourishing Communities Collaborative in the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech, which is looking at the 90% of the population who don't have access to technology and don't have access to architecture or to hire an architect. Good design – healthy and equitable spaces – should be a basic human right.
What impact do you want to have in and on the world? What is your core mission?
As a mentor and educator, I look to make an impact by providing, supporting, and extending capacities to students so that they are able to have their own successes and own it. When I see a student, or a group of students, who self-doubts or questions themselves, I want to be able to help them to see the capacity that they can offer and help them understand that successes look very different for different people. When I talk about being successful, I’m not talking about success in winning a top prize in a competition or becoming a principal of a firm. Success is finding joy and enthusiasm for whatever it is that they are involved in - finding that sense of satisfaction in themselves.
Another mission is to be a part of a bigger conversation on issues that matter. I would like to be in a position where I can be part of a conversation that leads to impactful, meaningful change, whatever that might be equity, justice, climate change, density, etc. My answer ten or fifteen years ago would have been at a different scale. Now, I feel like I want to be part of something that’s bigger than a single building - that is broader than that.
Rendering the Body Present, Bridging Architecture and Installation, Views of Exhibition
M1 Rail proposal, Detroit, Michigan, c2architecturestudio
Is there anything you wish you knew starting out that you know now? What would you go back and tell yourself?
It is OK to not know what is going to be happening next. When I started my career, I was very anxious about wanting to know what was going to be happening next, almost to use it as a way to measure my own capacity and decide if I was meeting a mark or not. Now I know it’s okay to not have a plan and it’s OK that sometimes you may go off on a tangent. That is not time lost or time wasted.
What advice do you have to those just starting out in their career? What is something you get to share often, since your students are graduating every year!
You have value. Whenever you are negotiating with a firm, remember they need you as much as you feel you need them. Do not undersell yourself. That is really important and I wish someone had told me that at the very beginning.
Don’t put a lot of pressure on yourself to find the perfect job right out of school because whatever job it is, you’re going to gain experience and knowledge that will just add another layer to who you are and you bring it forward.
Don’t forget that you are still a student even though you have graduated. You are still learning. That’s the way that I approach things that I am involved with. I am still learning! There is always something that I don’t know. There is always someone who knows something more than what I do.
Have fun! Especially within architecture, or with any job, you want to love what you are doing. You want to be able to have fun and you want to be able to take time for yourself. It’s all part of being the whole person. Nurture your whole person.