Getting to know more Young Architect Award winners
Each year, the Young Architects Award recognizes AIA members in the early stage of their architectural career who have shown exceptional leadership in design, planning, education, and service to the profession.
In the second part of our series about getting to know the 2024 Young Architect Award recipients, you’ll learn about what makes each one tick, why they were drawn to architecture, and what their dream projects are.
What first drew you to architecture?
Martin-Campbell: I was drawn to architecture through a combination of early childhood interests; creative expression through art and the rationalization through mathematics and science. Each of these mind sets fascinates me still. My approach to architecture blends them.
I have always had a passion to visualize and make things; be that a watercolor painting, growing a plant, or building a model. As those skills developed over time those interests expanded to space making and human habitat.
Wicke: Well, I think it was two parts, the more emotional part is that I have an uncle that was an architect, he was the Project Architect for the Grand Central Station Renovation & the Muhammad Ali Museum in Louisville, that I always admired and looked up to. I loved seeing what he was working on during holidays together.
The more calculated reason was the idea that it was work that you could sit down and grind through, a pursuit that is logical and strategic, while also subjective, creative, and less constraining that other traditional professions always appealed to me. I always enjoyed the arts but am a logical and strategic person and struggled with seeing the path to a successful career as an artist.
Architecture always represented a career that was a compelling intersection of a more traditional career path and the more open-ended nature of the creative arts.
Gard: My half-joking answer has always been that growing up I wanted to be a chef, but decided the late hours were not for me—thus architecture school was, at the time, a bit of a surprise. While that’s true, I think I have always loved a good project. Whether a meal, a building, or a neighborhood—the creative and intellectual exercise required when there is no single correct answer, and you need to bring something into being, is a thrill.
Ain: Sensibility to materiality was imprinted in my childhood. My father’s family in Egypt were GC’s. As little girls, my sisters and I used to play around piles of sand, brick, and other building materials.
McLemore: I initially intended to pursue engineering but accidentally stumbled into architecture due to a mishap on my Texas Common application. However, after unexpectedly getting into the College of Architecture, I discovered a passion for the field, thanks to its blend of creativity and problem-solving that was unlike the more straightforward formulaic problem-solving I had been used to in my high school engineering program.